Batteries are back in fashion, and could drastically decarbonize the world according to Smithsonian. Transportation alone accounts for 25% of warming. But if batteries could save the world would we demand electric transport … would we purchase an electric vehicle? That’s the question we need to ask!
How Could Batteries Save the World?
There are already some 1.5 billion cars on the road. This number might double in the foreseeable future, and knock on to climate change if we did nothing. However, it is entirely possible to power all those cars with electric motors instead. But the way we generate the electricity would also have to be renewable too.
Electric vehicle batteries could save the world from climate change, if we had enough low-carbon power stations to charge them. Most of these would have to be wind and solar, because those natural energies are free and abundant. However, we would need transient energy storage because their delivery is intermittent. That’s where batteries come in!
But We Would Need 100 Giga Factories
Elon Musk famously said we would need 100 of his giant battery factories to achieve this. Now each of those could cost $1 billion which is a pile of money. Especially as we already have coal gas and oil freely available with supply chains up and running.
The world economy runs on the basis of demand and supply. Is someone wants something, and is willing to pay a realistic price for it, then someone else will supply it. However, that demand must first exist, and it must be commercially viable too.
This brings us back to whether we will purchase electric vehicles, even if they cost more. Are we prepared to pay to reverse global warming? Or will we sit back and wait for someone else to assume the lead. That’s a question we do need to answer soon.
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