
The increase in battery demand drives the demand for critical materials. In 2022, lithium demand exceeded supply (as in 2021) despite the 180% increase in production since 2017. In 2022, about 60% of lithium, 30% of cobalt and 10% of nickel demand was for EV batteries. Just five years earlier, in 2017, these. . In 2022, lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) remained the dominant battery chemistry with a market share of 60%, followed by lithium iron phosphate (LFP) with a share of just. . With regards to anodes, a number of chemistry changes have the potential to improve energy density (watt-hour per kilogram, or Wh/kg). For example, silicon can be used to replace all or some of the graphite in the anode in order to make it lighter and thus increase. [pdf]
This strategy represents a whole of government effort, developed with business. The government’s 2030 vision is for the UK to have a globally competitive battery supply chain that supports economic prosperity and the net zero transition.
Some dramatically different approaches to EV batteries could see progress in 2023, though they will likely take longer to make a commercial impact. One advance to keep an eye on this year is in so-called solid-state batteries.
11 new battery energy storage sites (>7 MW), with a total capacity of 413 MW, came online in Q2 of 2023. This means that the average size of new batteries was 38 MW - but the median was just 24 MW. Essentially, one particularly large site skewed this average:
In China, battery demand for vehicles grew over 70%, while electric car sales increased by 80% in 2022 relative to 2021, with growth in battery demand slightly tempered by an increasing share of PHEVs. Battery demand for vehicles in the United States grew by around 80%, despite electric car sales only increasing by around 55% in 2022.
Other solid-state-battery players, like Solid Power, are also working to build and test their batteries. But while they could reach major milestones this year as well, their batteries won’t make it into vehicles on the road in 2023.
Automotive lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery demand increased by about 65% to 550 GWh in 2022, from about 330 GWh in 2021, primarily as a result of growth in electric passenger car sales, with new registrations increasing by 55% in 2022 relative to 2021.

Combating the symptoms will not help address the root cause of the issue that electricity prices are being driven by swings in the gas market. In southern Europe especially, relying on combined-cycle and open-cycle gas turbine plants to balance the electricity market is not only currently very costly but also a step. . An obvious option for southern Europe in particular is to modernize and expand interconnection capacity. By linking power markets with different, and. . Energy storage is particularly well suited to meet the unique needs of transmission and distribution networks, such as congestion management, or voltage and oscillation control, which. [pdf]
The Commission adopted in March 2023 a list of recommendations to ensure greater deployment of energy storage, accompanied by a staff working document, providing an outlook of the EU’s current regulatory, market, and financing framework for storage and identifies barriers, opportunities and best practices for its development and deployment.
Energy storage systems were historically used for grid balancing purposes within Europe, limiting their use to such applications or to be considered as “auxiliaries” to renewable generation assets.
Europe’s had startups working on energy storage for a number of years. Some are developing large-scale batteries to store energy and hook into the grid. Others are working on software to make storage batteries more efficient, while some are designing new batteries.
Batteries will form the backbone of our new grid. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said last month that grid-scale energy storage is now the fastest-growing of all energy technologies. It estimates that 80 gigawatts of new energy storage capacity will be added in 2025 — eight times the amount added in 2021.
A transition towards a more sustainable power system would be facilitated by the decreasing costs of renewable energy, flexible generation of sustainable power, electricity storage and power interconnections between the regions of Europe.
The European energy storage industry has witnessed remarkable growth over the last decade, going from 9MW of project announcements in 2010 up to a total of 5,700MW in 2020 (year to date). Out of these projects, around 1.7GW are operational while the remaining 4GW are either announced or under construction (Figure 1) .
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