128 • DECEMBER 2021better and better, as more companies
are discovering new chemistry and
processes to make them work more
efficiently. And the results of all of this
work are astonishing. According to
Bloomberg, energy density—the
amount of power that can be stored
in the same sized battery—has tripled
in the last decade. And the cost of
batteries has dramatically fallen too.
Today, battery power per kilowatt
hour costs around only ten per cent
of what it did a decade ago. And the
expectation is that the costs will
continue to fall, both as battery
chemistry improves and because
manufacturing lots of batteries on
a massive scale makes the production
of individual batteries cheaper.
You can be forgiven for thinking
that this might only be of interest to
accountants, but the implications of
this are enormous, and will benefit all
of us.
First and most obviously, it had
made the batteries in electric cars
cheaper and longer-lasting. For
example, back in 2011 a new Nissan
Leaf had a range of only around 70-80
miles. Today, the 2021 Leaf is capableA
s the politicians
made clear at last
month’s COP26 [United
Nations Climate Change
Conference], in Glasgow,
now is the time to act on climate
change. We need to cut carbon
emissions, and knowing this, it is easy
to be pessimistic: Will people really
be prepared to make changes in their
lives? Can we really remake society to
be much greener than it is now?
Strangely, I’m feeling optimistic.
Especially compared to if you’d asked
me a few years ago. And that’s mostly
because of one factor: Batteries. It isn’t
obvious but over the last decade or so,
just as we’ve watched our computers get
faster and screens get thinner, batteries
have dramatically improved too.
According to the European Patent
Office, the number of battery patents
filed grew by an average of 14 per cent
every year between 2005 and 2018. In
other words, battery innovation is
exploding. Energy storage is gettingJames O’Malley on how
battery technology has
revolutionised the fight
against climate change
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