Battery Storage: Unprecedented Global Growth!

Battery storage of electricity has made rapid progress. And it’s not over yet, the IEA announces, with capabilities needing to be multiplied by almost six by 2030 if the world is to meet its climate commitments.

Electricity storage by batteries, essential for the development of energy and transport without greenhouse gases, has achieved unprecedented global growth in 2023, but its capacity will need to be further multiplied by almost six by 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) emphasizes on Thursday. The deployment of batteries in combination with wind or solar fields, photovoltaic roofs or even mini-grids grew by 130% last year compared to 2022, adding 42 gigawatts to electricity systems around the world.

In the transport sector, battery deployment has increased by 40% (nearly 14 million new electric vehicles sold in 2023, compared to 3 million in 2020), according to this IEA report on batteries.

“The electricity and transport sectors are two pillars intended to reduce CO2 emissions fast enough to limit the possibility of global warming to 1.5°C” compared to pre-industrial times, recalls the director of the AIE, Fatih Birol, and “the batteries will be the basis”. In less than 15 years, its costs have fallen by more than 90%, the agency underlines.

“The combination of solar photovoltaics and batteries is today competitive with new Indian coal-fired power plants and in a few years will be cheaper than coal-fired power plants in China and gas-fired power plants in the United States,” Birol underlines.

However, global storage capacity will need to multiply by almost six by 2030 if the world is to meet its climate commitments, which were extended at COP28 at the end of 2023 with a commitment to triple the use of renewable energy sources by 2030. Batteries represent 90% of the effort (the rest of the storage is mainly provided by hydroelectric dams of the “Step” type, “pumped power plants”). According to the IEA, 1,500 GW of battery storage is needed by 2030. This storage makes it possible to make the best possible use of wind and solar energy, which has an intermittent character, by retaining the excess electricity produced and re-injecting it at the right time, during peak consumption, in the evening or when there is no wind. But costs will have to fall further, underlines the IEA, which also calls for diversification of supply chains, from metals to manufacturing plants.

Sami Nemli with Agency / ECO Inspirations