Energy

Explaining the Surging Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Published

6 years ago

August 24, 2016

Jeff Desjardins

The Battery Series
Part 3: Explaining the Surging Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries

The Battery Series is a five-part infographic series that explores what investors need to know about modern battery technology, including raw material supply, demand, and future applications.

Presented by: Nevada Energy Metals, eCobalt Solutions Inc., and Great Lakes Graphite

The Battery Series: Explaining the Surging Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Explaining the Surging Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries

In Parts 1 and 2, we examined the evolution of battery technology as well as what batteries can and cannot do. In this part, we will tackle demand in the rechargeable battery market, with a major focus on the rapidly growing lithium-ion segment.

For many decades, lead-acid batteries have been the most important rechargeable batteries in our lives.

Even in 2014, about 64.5% of all revenues in the rechargeable battery market were from lead-acid sales, mainly to be used for automotive starters.

Why?

Despite not being the most energy dense batteries, lead-acids are proven and can supply high surge currents. They are also extremely cheap to manufacture, costing around $150 per kWh of energy capacity.

Enter Lithium-Ion

The first lithium-ions were not cheap. In fact, early batteries produced commercially in the mid-90s typically costed upwards of $3,000 per kWh of energy.

Luckily, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has come down dramatically, making it the battery of choice for consumer electronics throughout the 2000s. And recently, scientists have made even more progress, opening the lithium-ion to many more applications, namely in electric vehicles.

In 2008, analysts estimated that lithium-ion battery packs costed $600-$1,200 per kWh, but this range would drop to $500-800 per kWh over the following four years. Tesla now claims that a Tesla Model S battery cost is $240 per kWh and that the expected cost for a Model 3 is $190 per kWh.

At $240 kWh, lithium-ions become competitive with $3/gallon gas. At $150, they are even competitive with $2 gas.

Giant megafactories such as Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 will also help bring economies of scale to lithium-ion production, making them even less cost-prohibitive. Soon battery packs will cost closer to $100 per kWh, which will make them essentially cheaper than all gas-powered vehicles.

Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Major advancements in lithium-ion battery technology have been a game-changer. Cheaper, more-effective lithium-ions are now taking over the battery market.

In 2014, lithium-ions made up 33.4% of the rechargeable battery market worldwide, worth $49 billion. By 2025, it is estimated by Bernstein that the rechargeable battery market will more than double in size to $112 billion, while lithium-ion’s market share will more than double to 70.0%.

The key driver? The automotive segment.

In 2010, the automotive sector was a drop in the bucket for lithium-ion battery sales. Five years later, automotive made up more than $5 billion of sales in a sector worth nearly $16 billion.

The EV Goes Mainstream

In 2015, almost half a million cars were sold in the US with an electric drive component.

14% of these sales were battery electric vehicles (BEVs):

71,000 Battery EVs (14%)
43,000 plug-in hybrids (9%)
384,000 hybrids (77%)

= 498,000 electric drive vehicles

But as a part of total US auto sales, BEVs still made up less than 1% of sales:

71,000 battery EVs (0.4%)
43,000 plug-in hybrids (0.3%)
384,000 hybrids (2.3%)
16,900,000 gas/diesel sales (97%)

However, in the near future, this is expected to change fast. By 2040, approximately 35% of all global sales will be BEVs.

This will put electric vehicle sales at close to 40 million per year globally, meaning a lot of energy will need to be stored by batteries. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that at this point, that electric vehicles will be pulling more than 1,900 TWh from the grid each year.

How much is 1,900 TWh? It’s enough to power the entire United States for 160 days.

And to meet this demand for lithium-ion powered vehicles, a massive amount of battery packs will need to be manufactured.

Part 4 of The Battery Series looks at which materials will be needed to make this possible.

Related Topics:demand energy tesla gigafactory lithium-ion batteries li-ion

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Energy

Visualizing the Scale of Global Fossil Fuel Production

How much oil, coal, and natural gas do we extract each year? See the scale of annual fossil fuel production in perspective.

Published

1 week ago

January 31, 2023

Govind Bhutada

The Scale of Global Fossil Fuel Production

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.

Fossil fuels have been our predominant source of energy for over a century, and the world still extracts and consumes a colossal amount of coal, oil, and gas every year.

This infographic visualizes the volume of global fossil fuel production in 2021 using data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

The Facts on Fossil Fuels

In 2021, the world produced around 8 billion tonnes of coal, 4 billion tonnes of oil, and over 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

Most of the coal is used to generate electricity for our homes and offices and has a key role in steel production. Similarly, natural gas is a large source of electricity and heat for industries and buildings. Oil is primarily used by the transportation sector, in addition to petrochemical manufacturing, heating, and other end uses.

Here’s a full breakdown of coal, oil, and gas production by country in 2021.

Coal Production

If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building.

China produced 50% or more than four billion tonnes of the world’s coal in 2021. It’s also the largest consumer of coal, accounting for 54% of coal consumption in 2021.

Rank	Country	2021 Coal Production (million tonnes)	% of Total
#1	🇨🇳 China	4,126.0	50%
#2	🇮🇳 India	811.3	10%
#3	🇮🇩 Indonesia	614.0	8%
#4	🇺🇸 U.S.	524.4	6%
#5	🇦🇺 Australia	478.6	6%
#6	🇷🇺 Russia	433.7	5%
#7	🇿🇦 South Africa	234.5	3%
#8	🇩🇪 Germany	126.0	2%
#9	🇰🇿 Kazakhstan	115.7	1%
#10	🇵🇱 Poland	107.6	1%
	🌍 Other	600.9	7%
	Total	8,172.6	100%

India is both the second largest producer and consumer of coal. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the world’s largest coal exporter, followed by Australia.

In the West, U.S. coal production was down 47% as compared to 2011 levels, and the descent is likely to continue with the clean energy transition.

Oil Production

In 2021, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were the three largest crude oil producers, respectively.

Rank	Country	2021 Oil Production (million tonnes)	% of Total
#1	🇺🇸 U.S.	711.1	17%
#2	🇷🇺 Russia	536.4	13%
#3	🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia	515.0	12%
#4	🇨🇦 Canada	267.1	6%
#5	🇮🇶 Iraq	200.8	5%
#6	🇨🇳 China	198.9	5%
#7	🇮🇷 Iran	167.7	4%
#8	🇦🇪 UAE	164.4	4%
#9	🇧🇷 Brazil	156.8	4%
#10	🇰🇼 Kuwait	131.1	3%
	🌍 Other	1172.0	28%
	Total	4221.4	100%

OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, made up the largest share of production at 35% or 1.5 billion tonnes of oil.

U.S. oil production has seen significant growth since 2010. In 2021, the U.S. extracted 711 million tonnes of oil, more than double the 333 million tonnes produced in 2010.

Natural Gas Production

The world produced 4,036 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021. The above graphic converts that into an equivalent of seven billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to visualize it on the same scale as oil and gas.

Here are the top 10 producers of natural gas in 2021:

Rank	Country	2021 Natural Gas Production (billion m³)	% of Total
#1	🇺🇸 U.S.	934.2	23%
#2	🇷🇺 Russia	701.7	17%
#3	🇮🇷 Iran	256.7	6%
#4	🇨🇳 China	209.2	5%
#5	🇶🇦 Qatar	177.0	4%
#6	🇨🇦 Canada	172.3	4%
#7	🇦🇺 Australia	147.2	4%
#8	🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia	117.3	3%
#9	🇳🇴 Norway	114.3	3%
#10	🇩🇿 Algeria	100.8	2%
	🌍 Other	1106.3	27%
	Total	4,036.9	100%

The U.S. was the largest producer, with Texas and Pennsylvania accounting for 47% of its gas production. The U.S. electric power and industrial sectors account for around one-third of domestic natural gas consumption.

Russia, the next-largest producer, was the biggest exporter of gas in 2021. It exported an estimated 210 billion cubic meters of natural gas via pipelines to Europe and China. Around 80% of Russian natural gas comes from operations in the Arctic region.