This study shows that battery electricity storage systems offer enormous deployment and cost-reduction potential. By 2030, total installed costs could fall between 50% and 60% (and battery cell costs by even more), driven by optimisation of manufacturing facilities, combined with better combinations and reduced use of materials.
There is also an abundant supply from Chinese battery producers, which are keen to expand into global markets. One factor that is making battery energy storage cheaper is the falling price of lithium, which is down more than 70 per cent over the past year amid slowing sales growth for electric vehicles.
Small-scale lithium-ion residential battery systems in the German market suggest that between 2014 and 2020, battery energy storage systems (BESS) prices fell by 71%, to USD 776/kWh.
To deliver this, battery storage deployment must continue to increase by an average of 25% per year to 2030, which will require action from policy makers and industry, taking advantage of the fact that battery storage can be built in a matter of months and in most locations.
Lithium-ion battery prices have declined from USD 1 400 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to less than USD 140 per kilowatt-hour in 2023, one of the fastest cost declines of any energy technology ever, as a result of progress in research and development and economies of scale in manufacturing.
China’s CATL, the world’s largest battery producer, says its energy storage batteries can last for 25 years. Will it save the planet? Not on its own — but grid-scale energy storage is part of the combination of clean energy technologies that is needed to reach net zero.