October 25, 2018: The switch from fossil fuels to renewables as a prime source of energy will offer a host of opportunities for all battery chemistries and not just lithium ion, Pablo Ralon, an associate programme officer for IRENA, told an audience at the ees/Ibesa summit in Strasbourg on October 24. IRENA is the International Renewable Energy Agency.

“By 2050 85% of Europe’s energy mix could be coming from renewable resources,” he said. “Battery storage will be essential for the future. I anticipate that lead batteries, flow batteries, high temperature sodium batteries will all contribute to this energy mix.

“Mostly they will be application specific but we anticipate that lithium batteries will be dominant by an order of a magnitude.”

Ralon said that he saw V2G — vehicle to grid — technology as being “hugely important” in the way that the world’s energy mix will balance itself. IRENA anticipates that by 2050 there will be some 965 million EVs on the world’s roads and 57 million electric buses.

Ralon also said that he saw no business case for V2GAS at present and that the technology was at a trial stage but could become important for longer term storage.

IRENA’s thinking is very much in line with that of the International Lead Association. Andy Bush, its head, reckons that the need for energy storage will be so great in future years that one chemistry alone could not meet this demand.

“It would be wrong to argue,” he says, “that we are in a simple binary situation of lead versus lithium. There will be room for both chemistries in a variety of markets. The sheer scale of battery energy storage demand in the near future — let alone in 20 years’ time — is so great that no single technology will be able to meet it.”