in 2019 the lithium-ion battery won the
nobel chemistry prize for making a
fossil fuel free world possible not bad
for something that made its commercial
debut in 1991 in a camcorder the camera
was revolutionary for the time but the
real game changer was the lightweight
powerful and rechargeable battery inside
soon lithium-ion batteries were in
everything from power tools to
toothbrushes they made smartphones
possible and put long-range electric
cars on the roads
these humble batteries have been quietly
powering our mobile lives for decades
and are now hailed as climate heroes
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batteries as we know them were invented
in 1800 the first electric cars were
actually developed in the 1880s but fell
by the wayside as the internal
combustion engine took over
now with the push to drastically
decarbonize the world the battery is
back in fashion
transport accounts for about a quarter
of global carbon emissions
provided the electricity is from low
carbon sources such as wind and solar
the switch to electric vehicles powered
by lithium-ion batteries
will stop billions of tons of carbon
dioxide reaching the atmosphere
today there are about 10 million
electric cars on the world's roads by
the end of the decade there'll be at
least
145 million
we're gonna need a lot of batteries
manufacturers all over the world are
building giant battery-making plants for
all the electric vehicles they're
producing
and it's not just cars these
gigafactories can help power tech
billionaire elon musk famously said that
if the world had 100 gigafactories
everything from our homes to transport
to businesses could run on solar we'll
need to wait to see if this happens but
there's no doubt that batteries are
central to a low carbon future
lithium-ion batteries can store clean
energy for when the sun isn't shining
and the wind isn't blowing sending it
out on grey days with the strength and
reliability that rivals fossil fuels
lithium-ion batteries already power the
international space station
charged by the sun's rays
a village in bihar india gained
electricity for the first time in 2014
thanks to this technology villages used
to burn wood kerosene and diesel but
thanks to lithium-ion batteries
connected to solar panels they now enjoy
what they call clean and cheap energy
independence
in brooklyn new york a neighborhood
microgrid harvests stores and
distributes clean energy through a
network of lithium-ion batteries solar
panels converters and smart meters
in the future we might all generate
solar power storing it in flat power
banks mounted on the walls of our homes
but clean energy use on a very large
scale will need a lot of new
infrastructure
we'll need charging points for all the
millions of new electric vehicles large
and small there are other challenges too
extracting lithium uses vast amounts of
ground water pump to the surface to
force out the brine it's left to
evaporate the process can lead to water
shortages and leaves behind toxic waste
cobalt is another challenge
traditionally lithium-ion batteries rely
on this metal and 70 percent of the
world's supply is in the democratic
republic of the congo
but mining in the drc is dangerous and
despite the high-priced cobalt commands
the country is one of the poorest in the
world batteries don't last forever
either it's thought that only five
percent are recycled
tons end up in landfills if they're
damaged you can get zombie batteries
that cause fires even underground but
these challenges have to be understood
in the context of the battery's
development over the centuries today
battery research is an exciting field
reliance on cobalt is falling as
alternatives become available and
although not yet widespread recycling
could grow
spurred on by e-waste regulation a
recycling plant in singapore can turn
280 000 batteries a day into 99 pure
fine powders of copper nickel lithium
and cobalt with a 90 recovery rate
just over the horizon faster charging
solid-state lithium batteries promise to
be even more energy dense with thousands
of charge cycles
we're not quite there yet but with
fierce global competition to perfect the
technology the multi-billion dollar
planet-saving battery revolution has
really only just begun
not bad for something that came for free
with a camcorder
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