The Rise of Batteries in Six Charts and Not Too Many Numbers

Battery demand is growing exponentially, driven by a domino effect of adoption that cascades from country to country and from sector to sector. This battery domino effect is set to enable the rapid phaseout of half of global fossil fuel demand and be instrumental in abating transport and power emissions. This is the conclusion of RMI’s recently published report X-Change: Batteries. In this article, we highlight six of the key messages from the report.

1. Battery sales are growing exponentially up S-curves

Battery sales are growing exponentially up classic S-curves that characterize the growth of disruptive new technologies. For thirty years, sales have been doubling every two to three years, enjoying a 33 percent average growth rate. In the past decade, as electric cars have taken off, it has been closer to 40 percent.

Exhibit 1: Global battery sales by sector, GWh/y

Source: Ziegler and Trancik (2021), Placke et al. (2017) for 1991-2014; BNEF Long-Term Electric Vehicle Outlook (2023) for 2015-2022 and the latest outlook for 2023 (*) from the BNEF Lithium-Ion Battery Price Survey (2023).

Read the full post at RMI.