{"id":396924,"date":"2025-08-22T08:35:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T06:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=396924"},"modified":"2025-08-22T08:35:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T06:35:25","slug":"the-battery-storage-delusion-what-35-million-tons-of-industrial-effort-buys-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=396924","title":{"rendered":"The Battery Storage Delusion.. what 35 million tons of industrial effort buys you"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, Commodity Trader, Author (recent book \u201c<\/em>The Unpopular Truth\u2026 about Electricity and the Future of Energy<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/strong>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Details inc Blog at <\/em>www.unpopular-truth.com<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who has spent most my professional life in the global energy and commodities space both as an economist and as a trader, I have grown increasingly concerned about the way grid-scale battery storage is portrayed in public discourse. If you have paid any attention to the headlines, you would have heard that battery technology is \u201con the verge of solving\u201d the intermittency problem of wind and solar energy. According to this narrative, all we need to do is build more battery storage, and the path to \u201cnet zero\u201d will unfold automatically\u2026 magically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If only it were that simple\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my latest blog post \u201c<\/strong>Pros and Cons of Utility-Scale Battery Storage<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong> I unpack the many assumptions behind this belief. The facts I present may be unpopular, but they are grounded in physics, not politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here a couple of key points that I feel might spark some interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35 million tons of raw materials for a couple of hours\u2026<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To build a 50 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system (approx. annual output of a Gigafactory),<\/strong> which has the ability to store electricity, for a city like New York, for only a few hours<\/strong>, you need ~ 35 million tons of raw materials (<\/strong>~ 700,000 t per GWh)<\/strong>. That roughly covers the mining, upgrading, transport, and processing of ores like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, iron ore, bauxite, and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about it like this\u2026a 1-<\/strong>ton<\/strong> utility-scale<\/strong> battery has a storage capacity of around 100 kWh <\/strong>and requires ~<\/strong> 70 tons <\/strong>of mined, processed, and manufactured raw materials <\/strong>to be manufactured. This is the energy equivalent of about ~<\/strong>40 kg of coal<\/strong> or ~<\/strong>20 litres of oil.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let that sink in: 70 tons of mining and industrial processing to store what coal already provides in a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Explosive potential<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These systems are not just material- and energy-intensive, but they also carry serious safety risks<\/strong>. The energy stored in a 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system is roughly equivalent to nearly 900 tons of TNT<\/em><\/strong>\u2026that is not a metaphor. That is a chemical and thermal reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thermal runaway events have already caused warehouse fires, ship explosions, and data centre shutdowns around the world. And with each battery pack tightly stacked in grid-scale installations, one malfunction can lead to catastrophic chain reactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet we keep building more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power a city for minutes<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s do the math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 1 GWh<\/strong> utility-scale battery system, requiring ~700,000 tons of mined and processed raw materials<\/strong>, can power:<\/p>\n\n\n\n