The battery boom17 Jan 2019 11:48
http://www.mining.com/web/battery-boom-attract-620-billion-investment-2040/
Two important markets come into particular focus. China, which is building up its battery-manufacturing capacity, will be a central player in the boom. California, meanwhile, has pushed through a series of measures in recent years that will directly or indirectly spur more batteries, including legislation that would require all of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by 2045.
“Storage is just so sensibly the next step in the evolution of renewable energy,” Edward Fenster, the executive chairman of San Francisco-based rooftop-solar company Sunrun Inc., said in an interview. “If we’re going to get to 100 percent renewable energy, we’ll need storage.”
Here are six key takeaways from the latest BNEF battery forecast:
Cumulative energy-storage deployments are now forecast to exceed 50 gigawatt-hours by 2020. That’s three years earlier than BNEF’s outlook from just last year. Energy storage may be equivalent to 7 percent of the world’s total installed power capacity by 2040. The Asia-Pacific region will be home to 45 percent of total installations on a megawatt basis by 2040. Another 29 percent will be spread across Europe, Middle East and Africa. The remainder will be in the Americas. The majority of storage capacity will be utility-scale until the mid-2030s. But then so-called behind-the-meter projects— installations at businesses, industrial sites and residential properties—will overtake utility-scale. A list of the leading battery countries is topped by who you would expect: China, U.S., India, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, South Korea and the U.K. South Korea today dominates the market but will be overtaken by the U.S. early in the 2020s—and both will later be eclipsed by China. Storage is coming to developing countries in Africa, too. BNEF explains it thusly: utilities will likely recognize that the combination of solar, diesel and batteries in “far-flung sites” is cheaper than extending the power grid or building a fossil-only generator.
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