Want to know where batteries are going? Look at their ingredients. 

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I was chatting with a group recently about which technology is the most crucial one to address climate change. With the caveat that we’ll definitely need a whole host of solutions to truly tackle the challenge, my personal choice would have to be batteries. 

This might not be a surprise, since I’m almost constantly going on about batteries—If you want to read more on the topic, we’ve got loads to choose from on the site. You can start herehere or here.

Batteries are going to transform transportation and could also be key in storing renewables like wind or solar power for times when those resources aren’t available. So in a way, they’re a central technology for the two sectors responsible for the biggest share of emissions: energy and transportation. 

And if you want to understand what’s coming in batteries, you need to look at what’s happening right now in battery materials. The International Energy Agency just released a new report on the state of critical minerals in energy, which has some interesting battery-related tidbits. So for the newsletter this week, let’s dive into some data about battery materials. 

So what’s new with battery materials?

This probably isn’t news to you, but EV sales are growing quickly—they made up 14% of global new vehicle sales in 2022 and will reach 18% in 2023, according to the IEA. This global growth is one of the reasons we here at MIT Technology Review put “the inevitable EV” on our list of breakthrough technologies this year. 

Add to the steady market growth the fact that around the world, EV batteries are getting bigger. That’s right—not just in the US, which is infamous for its massive vehicles. The US still takes the cake for the largest average battery capacity, but the inflation of battery size is a worldwide phenomenon, with both Asia and Europe seeing a similar or even more dramatic jump in recent years. 

Add up the growing demand for EVs, a rising battery capacity around the world, and toss in the role that batteries could play for storage on the grid, and it becomes clear that we’re about to see a huge increase in demand for the materials we need to make batteries. 

Take lithium, one of the key materials used in lithium-ion batteries today. If we’re going to build enough EVs to reach net-zero emissions, lithium demand is going to increase roughly tenfold between now and 2040. Lithium is one of the most dramatic examples, but other metals, like copper and nickel, are also going to be in high demand in the coming decades (you can play around with the IEA’s data explorer for yourself here).

We’re not going to run out of any of the materials we need to generate renewable energy, as I wrote earlier this year. Batteries could be a tighter scenario, but overall, experts say that we do have enough resources on the planet to make the batteries we need. And as battery recycling ramps up, we should eventually get to a place where there’s a stable supply of materials from old batteries. 

But we’ve already started to see what dramatic increases in material demand can mean in the short-term for the battery market. Recently, prices for lithium and some other metals have seen huge spikes as battery manufacturers scrambled to meet the immediate demand. That caused prices for lithium-ion batteries to increase last year for the first time ever. 

What does all this mean? 

So we’re seeing huge demand increases that are only going to continue, and while there are enough materials in the long term, there could be some short-term scrambles for purified and processed battery materials. That’s going to shape the battery world going forward, and there are a couple of ways that could play out: 

First, automakers are going to get even more involved with the raw materials they need to make batteries. Their business depends on having these materials consistently available, and they’re already making moves to secure their own supply. 

As of 2023, all but one of the world’s top 10 EV makers have signed some sort of long-term offtake deal to secure raw materials. Five have invested in mining, five have invested in refining, and almost all those deals have happened since 2021. 

Supply constraints will also push new innovation in batteries. 

We’ve already seen the start of this: cobalt has been a crucial ingredient in cathodes for lithium-ion batteries for years. But the metal has come under scrutiny because its mining has been linked extensively to forced and child labor. 

In recent years tech giants and EV makers have started making pledges to use only responsibly mined cobalt. And at the same time, battery makers started turning to chemistries that contain less cobalt, or even cut out the metal entirely, partly in an effort to cut costs. 

Lithium iron phosphate batteries don’t contain any cobalt, and they’ve grown from a small fraction of EV batteries to about 30% of the market in just a few years. Low-cobalt options have also gained traction just since 2019. 

I think we’re going to keep seeing new, exciting options in the battery world, in part because of these materials constraints. Iron-based batteries could play a major role in grid-scale storage, for example, and we could also see more sodium-based batteries in cheap EVs soon. 

I don’t pick favorites when it comes to climate technologies, but I’m always watching the battery world especially closely. So stay tuned for more on the crucial role of materials for the future of batteries—and in the meantime, check out some of our recent stories on the topic. 

Related reading

I wrote in January about what’s next for EV batteries this year. I think my predictions are playing out pretty well so far. 

Lithium iron phosphate batteries could help slash EV prices, as I explored in February

I see a lot of myths around climate technology and materials—and I busted a few in a newsletter earlier this year. 

Keeping up with climate

There are record-breaking heat waves across the US, China, and Europe. (New York Times)

→ I wrote about the limits of the human body in extreme heat in 2021. (MIT Technology Review)

Speaking of heat, a group of scientists created an especially white paint that can reflect about 98% of the sun’s rays. It could help keep buildings cooler. (New York Times)

Among the most important components in many fusion reactors are the magnets. I loved this in-depth look at the role of superconducting tape inside the tokamak reactor that Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building. (IEEE Spectrum)

Diablo Canyon is California’s last nuclear plant and the state’s single largest energy source. It’s scheduled to come offline in 2025—but whether or not that will happen as planned is still to be determined. (Los Angeles Times)

Some oil companies are getting into the carbon removal game. Their involvement with the technology could make things complicated for its role in cutting emissions. (E&E News

The Biden administration is putting a lot of money into “climate-smart” crops, which could help pull more carbon out of the atmosphere and store it. But critics are concerned that we don’t understand or measure enough to know how well these plans would work. (Yale E360)

These companies want to replace polluting diesel generators with batteries. (Canary Media)

Low-quality batteries found in some e-bikes can be dangerous, and they’ve sparked several fires in New York City in recent months. The food delivery workers who rely on these bikes could use support from the apps that broker their work, like Uber and DoorDash. (TechCrunch

Why some companies want you to rent the battery in your EV

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I seem to be constantly signing up for new subscriptions these days. Netflix, Paramount+, and of course I’m glued to the latest season of Succession, so now I’m back on HBO Max too. 

And soon, I might have another subscription to consider adding to that list: an EV battery. Instead of owning the batteries that power our EVs, some companies want to rethink our relationship and are pushing batteries as a service. Pay a monthly subscription fee, and you could consistently change out the nearly-spent batteries powering your vehicle for fresh ones in swapping stations. 

Some companies are working to make battery swaps a reality, and I wrote about their progress in a story that you should check out here. And for the newsletter this week, I want to dig in on an issue raised by these companies’ vision for the future that I can’t get out of my head: Should we own our own batteries? 

The vision

Picture this: It’s 2030, you’re on a road trip, and your EV battery is getting low. You stop in a city you’ve never been to before, and instead of plugging in, you pull into a battery-swapping station. You press a button on an app and the station platform raises the car, unscrews the battery powering your EV, and installs a new one in its place. In less than five minutes, you go from almost empty to 100% charged, ready to continue on your way. 

The battery you’ve picked up to power the next leg of your road trip isn’t yours. But then again, neither was the one that you dropped off. 

This is the vision for some companies, including Nio, an automaker based in China. Nio has about 300,000 vehicles on the road and about 1,400 of its own battery-swap stations up and running. 

If you drive a Nio, you do have the option to purchase the battery outright when you buy the car. Alternatively, you can get access to the battery-swapping network by basically subscribing to the company’s pool of batteries.

Nio recently expanded its operations into Norway, so let’s take that as an example of what the financials might look like here. (I’ve converted everything to US dollars here, using May 2023 conversion rates.) 

Say you decide to purchase a Nio ES8 in Norway, and you want to opt for the smallest battery, which has a capacity of 75 kilowatt-hours. 

If you want to own that battery, and you don’t want to visit swap stations, your vehicle will cost you roughly $58,500. If, on the other hand, you prefer to lease the battery, you’ll pay just under $50,000 up front, plus a monthly fee of $135. (The costs are all a bit higher if you opt for the 100 kWh battery, but the idea is the same.) For that monthly fee, you get a couple of swaps or a set amount of rapid charging. 

It would take you just over five years to start paying more in the monthly fee than you would have paid with the up-front option, and most EVs on the roads today have battery warranty coverage for eight to 10 years. 

The implications

I’m fascinated by this potential shift in ownership for batteries, and I think if the vision turns out to be the reality, there are a lot of potential upsides.

The ability to rent batteries could mean less stress about battery degradation for drivers, according to Fei Shen, the VP of power management at Nio. “It’s not necessary for them to worry about it at all, because they can swap this battery at any time, whenever they want,” he says. 

And for the company, it’s easier to track and service batteries. “If we find some potential problems, we can keep this battery in our swap station and do the maintenance,” Shen says. The same goes for reclaiming batteries for recycling at the end of their lifetime, he adds. 

Then there’s the possibility of customization: drivers could opt for a smaller-capacity battery and upgrade only before longer trips, for example. That could cut costs and even reduce the total quantity of materials needed to build batteries for EV fleets.

But on the flip side, some EV experts aren’t so sure the battery-swapping picture would turn out quite so rosy. 

It might be harder to keep consistently high-quality batteries in stock than companies are letting on, says Gil Tal, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric-vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. “So when you swap a battery, you may get a worse battery or a better battery,” depending on what’s available, he says. 

He’s also skeptical that people will be willing to take a chance on availability. “It’s not going to work—everyone will ask for the big battery at the same time,” Tal says. Have you ever tried to rent a car at an airport during a storm, or find a spot for your Citi Bike at a big event? Those logistics can be tough for companies to figure out. 

There are a lot of fascinating dynamics at play for EV battery swapping, and it’s not just about the possibility of changing the relationship we have with batteries. Check out my story for so much more on this technology and what it might take to really make it happen. 

Related reading

Keeping up with climate

One little-known group is having a huge influence on the climate goals of major corporations. Here’s what you need to know about the Science Based Targets initiative. (MIT Technology Review)

The US Environmental Protection Agency just released a new set of rules that will govern emissions from power plants, potentially cutting emissions by 617 million metric tons by 2042. (Inside Climate News)

→ A lot of the buzz around these new rules is about how they treat carbon capture and storage, a technology that’s still expensive and largely unproven. (E&E News)

→ The problem, though, is that these rules still aren’t enough to meet climate goals for the power sector. (Heatmap News)

The iconic cobalt-blue Citi Bikes have officially been on the streets for 10 years in New York City. Celebrate a decade of fun, climate-friendly transportation with this oral history of the bike-share program. (Curbed)

School buses are going electric. New funding in the US is pushing the change, and I love how these charts show the shift. (Canary Media

→ By the way, the US Postal Service is finally getting with the program on EVs. (MIT Technology Review)

The EU is relying on green hydrogen to fuel climate progress in heavy industry. But without major financial subsidies and quicker regulatory processes, some executives are doubtful that the bloc can reach production goals. (Financial Times)

We should all be talking more about beans. Low-emission, delicious—what more could you ask for? I’ve personally gotten very into cannellini beans recently. (Vox)

You’ve probably never heard of the Loan Programs Office in the US Department of Energy, but the office and its director are a major driving force in clean energy today. (New York Times)

Nickel is a key ingredient in batteries, and Indonesia has plenty of it. But getting the metal into a form that’s useful for the energy transition involves an intense chemical process and a lot of waste that the country is going to have to reckon with. (Washington Post)

→ Yes, we have enough of the materials we need for the energy transition. (MIT Technology Review)

Looking for an EV? You might not find one at your local car dealership. Part of the problem is supply-chain holdups, but a surprising number of dealerships are resistant to the idea of selling EVs, which can disrupt their business model. (Vox)

How 5-minute battery swaps could get more EVs on the road

Charging has emerged as the primary way people keep their EV batteries full of juice while on the go, but some companies have an alternative in mind that they think could be even quicker than the fastest chargers today: battery swapping.

Today, a San Francisco–based startup called Ample demonstrated its new battery-swap system, which it says can exchange a depleted EV battery for a fresh one in five minutes.

Ample joins several other companies, past and present, with similar ideas. Battery swapping aims to match the convenience and speed of visiting a gas station, which proponents say could help strengthen the case for EVs by making it faster to replenish a car’s range. But some experts are skeptical, viewing battery swapping as an expensive solution that will at best serve a narrow niche within the future of electric transportation. 

Ample’s new swapping stations look like Silicon Valley–designed car washes, all gleaming white and rounded corners. “The whole vision is that we want to provide an experience that is as fast, affordable, and convenient as gas,” said Hamid Schricker, Ample’s director of product, as he gave me a video tour.

An Ample station has the footprint of roughly two parking spaces and offers drive-through service. When a vehicle is ready for a swap, the driver motors up to the station. A door slides up, revealing a platform inside. After navigating into position on the platform by following the instructions on screens inside the station, the driver hits a button in a connected app to start the swap. The station’s platform lifts the vehicle and its occupants several feet, and then the internal machinery gets to work, removing the used batteries in the vehicle and installing fresh ones. When the swap is finished, the platform lowers the vehicle back down to the road, and the driver can take off, charged and ready to go.

The depleted batteries can then be charged up over several hours and installed in another vehicle. While the batteries can be charged more quickly, slowing things down helps prevent degradation, says John de Souza, Ample’s cofounder and president. The number of swaps will be limited by the connection to the electrical grid, so a station with a 100 kilowatt connection will be able to charge and swap 48 batteries in the course of a day, each with a capacity of 50 kilowatt-hours.

Ample has a dozen of its first-generation swapping stations installed around the San Francisco area. Together, they’re performing a few hundred swaps each day at roughly 10 minutes apiece, de Souza says. The startup is partnered with Uber, aiming to demonstrate that battery swapping could help in demanding applications like ride-share fleets. But the ultimate vision is a drop-in replacement that allows people on commutes or road trips to swap out their EV battery and be on their way.

Building swapping stations will be more expensive than building superchargers: Ample declined to share exactly how much it planned to spend on each station, saying only that they would be less expensive than other battery-swap facilities that can cost half a million dollars to build and install.

A fork in the road

Ample is far from the first company to pursue battery swapping. Tesla Motors explored the concept, demonstrating the technology in its Model S in 2013 before eventually abandoning the plan in favor of its supercharging network.

Better Place was one of the most well-known battery-swap ventures. The startup was founded in 2007 and worked with automaker Renault, building a network of a few dozen swapping stations in Israel. But after raising some $850 million, the company failed to get more automakers and drivers on board and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The specter of Better Place hangs over battery-swap efforts today, but de Souza says Ample’s approach addresses issues that sank previous iterations of the technology.

For a third-party company like Better Place or Ample to gain ground, it must find a way to be compatible with vehicles hitting the road. But getting automakers to converge on a battery is a challenge: companies are increasingly choosing different battery designs and chemistries for different models.

Ample’s solution is a modular system. Rather than take the whole battery out at once and screw on a fresh one, the startup plans to fit several smaller packs into a battery frame. This cuts down on the cost for machinery needed to move batteries, since the pieces are smaller, de Souza says.

And crucially, the modular design could make it easier for automakers to sign on, de Souza says. Ample’s vision is for vehicle makers to deliver their cars with an empty space where the battery should be. Ample can then build an envelope for that specific vehicle and plug in as many modules as will fit.

The number of modules can be customized both to the size of the vehicle (a compact car will hold fewer than a large SUV) and to driver needs—someone might install just a few modules for daily driving but load up when going on a long trip, de Souza says.

So far, Ample’s swapping stations are compatible with two vehicle models that have the company’s special batteries installed: the Nissan Leaf and the Kia Niro. According to de Souza, the system works with 13 vehicle models, though no other automaker partners have been announced.

Some experts are skeptical that even this altered vision of battery swapping is practical. “I think battery swapping is unlikely to be the primary way that we manage batteries for the general vehicle fleet,” says Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Every make and model of electric vehicle on the road today has a different battery design, shape, and chemistry. Swapping requires standardization, and even if modules can provide some customization, they would still be a major constraint for automakers. “Putting the same size modules into different vehicles is very limiting,” he says.

In the driver’s seat

While third-party companies like Ample are aiming to create a standardized swapping ecosystem, some automakers are establishing their own infrastructure that gives them more control over the details.

In China, Nio has established itself as a major player in battery swapping. The automaker has about 1,400 commercial battery-swap stations deployed; most are in China, though the company has started expanding operations into European countries like Norway and the Netherlands as well. The goal is to have 2,300 stations installed by the end of 2022. 

The major selling point for customers is convenience, says Fei Shen, senior vice president of power management at Nio. “If we do battery swaps, the time is almost equivalent to refueling,” he says.

Nio’s swap stations move its batteries around all in one piece. The company offers three different battery options with different capacities, with each fitting into any and all vehicles it makes.

Nio’s customers don’t have to swap batteries—the vehicles can top off at fast-charging stations that Nio also builds—but the option is there, and people are using it, Shen says. The automaker has 300,000 vehicles on the road, and about 60% of drivers have used swap stations, according to the company’s data. In total, the company’s stations have performed 20 million swaps, and its newest stations can perform 400 a day. 

Nio isn’t the only company going after battery swapping in China. In total, six Chinese companies including Nio plan to have 26,000 installed battery-swap stations in the country by 2025, according to projections by BNEF, an energy research firm.

Hitting the brakes 

These efforts might succeed at the higher end of the market, but it’s not likely that companies like Nio will be able to serve the vast majority of drivers, says Gil Tal, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric-vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. “I think it’s a very expensive solution,” he says. 

Not only will battery-swap companies need to build expensive swap stations (which, according to some early estimates, can run roughly double the cost of an equivalent fast-charging station), but they’ll need to maintain the complicated machinery involved. “It’s very difficult to manage a lot of swap stations—all of them have to have a high reliability,” Shen says. 

Nio and some other battery-swap companies plan to charge customers a monthly fee for their batteries and swapping privileges. In Norway, the cost for Nio’s lowest-capacity battery is roughly $135 monthly (owning the battery outright would cost around $8,500).

The marginal time savings of a battery swap might not be worth that extra cost and trouble. “Most EV drivers don’t drive more than the range of the car,” Tal says. For the few who do, he adds, stopping at a fast charger for 15 to 20 minutes won’t be a bigger barrier than stopping for a swap. 

Fast chargers are getting quicker all the time, with the Tesla supercharging network offering up to 250 kilowatts of charging power today—enough to add about 200 miles of range in 15 minutes. Other fast chargers deployed today can hit 350 kilowatts

Companies may be able to deploy battery swapping where people will pay a premium for speed: luxury vehicles, or for fleets of delivery trucks or taxis. It’s more likely to be helpful in the narrow range of cases where stopping at a fast charger is a major inconvenience. But at least for now, once we ditch gas pumps, we’ll be plugging in on road trips.

How sodium could change the game for batteries

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Buckle up, because this week, we’re talking about batteries. 

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been noticing a lot of announcements about a new type of battery, one that could majorly shake things up if all the promises I’m hearing turn out to be true.

The new challenger? Sodium-ion batteries, which swap sodium for the lithium that powers most EVs and devices like cell phones and laptops today. 

Sodium-ion batteries could squeeze their way into some corners of the battery market as soon as the end of this year, and they could be huge in cutting costs for EVs. I wrote a story about all the recent announcements, and you should give it a read if you’re curious about what companies are jumping in on this trend and what their plans are. But for the newsletter this week, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the chemistry and consider what the details could mean for the future of EV batteries.

Top dog

One of the reasons that lithium dominates batteries today is absolutely, maddeningly simple: it’s small. 

I mean that in the most literal, atomic sense. Lithium is the third-lightest element, heavier than only hydrogen and helium. When it comes down to it, it’s hard to beat the lightest metal in existence if you’re trying to make compact, lightweight batteries.

And cutting weight and size is the goal for making everything from iPhones to EVs: a lightweight, powerful battery means your phone can be smaller and your car can drive farther. So one of the primary ways we’ve measured progress for batteries is energy density—how much energy a battery can pack into a given size. 

When you look at that chemical reality, it’s almost no wonder that lithium-ion batteries have exploded in popularity since their commercial debut in the 1990s. There are obviously other factors too, like lithium-ion’s ability to reach high voltages in order to deliver a lot of power, but the benefit of being lightweight and portable is hard to overstate. 

Lithium-ion batteries have also benefited from being the incumbent. There are countless researchers scouring the world for new materials and new ways to build lithium-ion cells, and plenty of companies making them in greater numbers—all of which adds up to greater efficiencies. As a result, costs have come down basically every year for decades (with the notable exception of 2022). 

And at the same time, energy density is ticking up, a trend I’m personally grateful for because I often forget to charge my phone for days at a time, and it typically works out much better when that happens now than it did a few years ago. 

Branching out

But just because lithium-ion dominates the battery world today doesn’t mean it’ll squash the competition forever. 

I’ve written about the growing number of options in the battery industry before, mostly in the context of stationary storage on the electrical grid. This is especially important in the transition to intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. 

While backup systems tend to use lithium-ion batteries today since they’re what’s available, many companies are working to build batteries that could eventually be even cheaper and more robust. In other words, many researchers and companies want to design batteries specifically for stationary storage.  

New batteries could be made with abundant materials like iron or plastic, for example, and they might use water instead of organic solvents to shuttle charge around, addressing lingering concerns about the safety of large-scale lithium-ion battery installations. 

But compared to stationary storage, there are fewer candidates that could work in EV batteries, because of the steep demands we have for our vehicles. Today, most of the competition in the commercial market is between the different flavors of lithium-ion batteries, with some lower-cost versions that don’t contain cobalt and nickel gaining ground in the last couple of years. 

That could change soon too, though, because just below lithium on the periodic table, a challenger lurks: sodium. Sodium is similar to lithium in some ways, and cells made with the material can reach similar voltages to lithium-ion cells (meaning the chemical reactions that power the battery will be nearly as powerful). 

And crucially, sodium-based batteries have recently been cramming more energy into a smaller package. In 2022, the energy density of sodium-ion batteries was right around where some lower-end lithium-ion batteries were a decade ago—when early commercial EVs like the Tesla Roadster had already hit the road. 

Projections from BNEF suggest that sodium-ion batteries could reach pack densities of nearly 150 watt-hours per kilogram by 2025. And some battery giants and automakers in China think the technology is already good enough for prime time. For more on those announcements and when we might see the first sodium-battery-powered cars on the road, check out my story on the technology

Related reading

Here’s how sodium batteries could get their start in EVs.

I wrote about the potential for this sort of progress in a story from January about what we might see for batteries this year.

Sodium could be competing with low-cost lithium-ion batteries—these lithium iron phosphate batteries figure into a growing fraction of EV sales.

Take a tour of some other non-lithium-based batteries:

a view inside the electromagnetic coil of the Polaris reactor
The electromagnetic coils that will be used in Polaris.
HELION

Another thing

A startup says it’ll be ready to turn on the world’s first fusion power plant in five years. Yes, you read that right: five years. 

Helion Energy, a fusion startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, announced that it’s lined up an agreement to sell electricity to Microsoft. The company says its first plant will come online in 2028 and will reach full capacity (50 megawatts of output) within a year after that. 

As you might remember, the energy world reached a huge milestone in December when a fusion reaction generated more energy than what was put in to start it. But for a lot of reasons, that symbolic moment doesn’t necessarily mean cheap fusion power is within our grasp. And some experts are pretty skeptical about Helion’s announcement. Read more about the details in this story from my colleague James Temple

Keeping up with climate

Need a few extra miles of range on your EV? Might as well slap some solar panels on the roof. But don’t expect too much of a boost. (Bloomberg

For the first time in my entire life, I seem to be experiencing seasonal allergies. And climate change might have something to do with it. (The Atlantic)

Companies might be overselling the potential for so-called “renewable natural gas.” While it can cut emissions relative to fossil sources, critics worry that putting too much stock in methane made from cow manure or food scraps will slow efforts to ditch fossil fuels. (Canary Media)

→ I wrote earlier this year about how the process to make and capture methane from food scraps works. (MIT Technology Review)

Aubrey Plaza is hilarious and a gift to this world, but some people aren’t so happy about a recent ad she did for the dairy industry that takes aim at plant-based milks. (Vox)

India might stop adding new coal power plants to the pipeline. While this wouldn’t stop all current construction, it could be a major boost to the country’s emissions cuts. (Reuters)

A lot of the work to improve battery performance has been basically focused on one half of the device: the cathode. But some companies are working hard to improve the often-overlooked anodes by using silicon. (IEEE Spectrum)

→ Silicon anodes from startup Sila made their debut in fitness trackers nearly two years ago. The next stop? EVs. (MIT Technology Review)

Support for nuclear power in the US just reached its highest level in over a decade, according to a new Gallup poll. (Grist

Electric vehicles made up 80% of Norway’s new car sales last year. The country provides a picture of the potential future for electrified transport’s benefits (cleaner air!) and challenges (long charging lines). (New York Times)

Why your iPhone 17 might come with a recycled battery

My phone is basically an extension of my arm at this point. To be honest, I have some mixed feelings about that, and not just because I worry about what being online 24/7 is doing to my brain cells. 

As you might know, lithium-ion batteries power most of our personal electronics today. Mining the metals that make up those batteries can mean a lot of pollution, as well as harmful conditions for workers. All these problems are starting to balloon as we use lithium and assorted other materials not just in our phones and laptops, but in electric vehicles as well. 

The good news is, as I’ve written about before, a growing number of groups are working to make sure batteries get recycled—and some of those efforts are becoming mainstream. 

Last week Apple announced that its batteries would use 100% recycled cobalt beginning in 2025. I think this announcement says a lot about where the battery recycling industry is and where it’s going. So for the newsletter this week, let’s dive into Apple’s recycling pledge. 

iRecycle

There’s obviously a huge array of materials that go into phones and computers, and Apple’s recycling announcement isn’t just about cobalt. The company also said that by 2025, it plans to use recycled rare-earth elements in its magnets (like the ones that help your watch and phone charge wirelessly), as well as recycled materials for the tin soldering and gold plating used for its circuit boards. 

But it’s probably no accident that cobalt is the headline item. The metal has become something of a poster child for all the potential damage mining could do in the name of the clean-energy economy. It’s a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, and today, cobalt is mined largely in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the activity has been tied to human rights abuses like forced labor. There’s a huge New Yorker feature about this from 2021, as well as a new book, if you want to learn more.

As of 2022, Apple was already using about 25% recycled cobalt in its batteries, up from 13% the year before. And as the new release lays out, in just a few years, all the cobalt in all “Apple-designed batteries” will be from recycled sources. One quick note here—I reached out to Apple to ask what total volume of cobalt this would represent, along with a few other questions about the news. The company hasn’t gotten back to me yet. 

I decided to dig into this announcement a bit more because of a trend I’d come across in my previous reporting on battery recycling—there’s not enough old batteries getting recycled to meet demand for recycled materials

Around and around

When it comes to materials for clean energy, a lot of people talk about a “circular economy” where batteries coming off the roads in old EVs can be used to make new ones, with zero (or very little) mining for new materials. For that to happen, you’d need about as many batteries on the metaphorical off-ramp as the number coming onto the on-ramp. And that’s not what’s happening at all. 

In case you hadn’t heard, electric vehicles are on the rise. In 2017, a little over 1% of new vehicles sold globally were EVs. Just five years later, in 2022, that number had increased to about 13%, according to the International Energy Agency. We’re probably going to keep seeing more EVs hitting the road every year for a while, especially as countries pass new policies boosting EVs around the world.

The quick uptake of EVs is great news for climate action, but it’s causing a tricky dynamic for battery recyclers. 

Batteries can last over a decade in a vehicle, and they can be in use for even longer if they end up getting a second life in stationary energy storage. So an EV battery won’t be ready to be recycled for at least around 15 years, in most cases. Looking back 15 years ago, in 2008, the Tesla Roadster had just started production, and the company made just a few hundred annually for the first couple of years. To put it mildly: there aren’t many EVs coming off the roads because of old age today, and there won’t be for a while. 

So as the EV market continues to grow exponentially, there’s going to be a shortage of recycled materials. If all EV and phone manufacturers wanted to use only recycled cobalt, for example, there wouldn’t be enough to go around. 

Production of batteries for EVs is booming: the global total of lithium-ion batteries produced for light-duty vehicles could top 12 million metric tons by 2030. Meanwhile, less than 200,000 metric tons of batteries from the same types of vehicles will be available for recycling by that date. 

Despite that daunting gap, there are a couple reasons Apple can probably meet its pledge on recycled cobalt, says Hans Eric Melin, head of Circular Energy Storage, a consulting firm specializing in battery recycling. 

For one, portable devices have been powered using lithium-ion batteries for decades. Thanks to your dad’s camcorder and your Motorola Razr flip phone from 2006, there’s at least some recycled cobalt floating around the market today. 

And the economics of using recycled materials shake out to be pretty different for personal devices and cars. Because of its size, an EV battery can be nearly 40% of the cost of the vehicle, Melin says. That’s not the case with devices like a phone, so a company like Apple will probably be able to pay a bit more for recycled battery materials without affecting the price of the whole device. 

So your iPhone in 2025 (by my math, that might be the iPhone 17) could be made using cobalt from recycled sources. Vehicles might take a bit longer: EV batteries are bigger, and there are fewer old ones ready for a new life. But we’re inching toward a world where we can reuse more of the materials in the technology we know and love. 

Related reading: 

Battery recycling was one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies in 2023. Check out the list item, as well as my deep dive into the tech

I spoke with JB Straubel, Tesla’s former CTO and founder of battery recycler Redwood Materials. Here’s what he had to say about the challenges ahead for batteries.

The first-ever edition of this newsletter was a travel journal of sorts from my trip to Redwood. Revisit that trip here

Another thing

Efforts to slow down climate change and adapt to what’s already happening are complicated and difficult. What if we could also try to counteract a bit of the planetary warming we’ve already caused? Some researchers say it’s an intriguing enough idea to at least look into. 

Geoengineering is understandably controversial, since large-scale efforts, or even attempts to study the potential effects, could change life for people across the planet. And what’s good for some might not be good for all. As debates rage on, some groups are working to get a wider range of voices into the room, especially from climate-vulnerable nations that arguably have the most at stake. 

My colleague James Temple took a look inside some of the groups working to open up who’s involved in the conversation around geoengineering. Check out his insightful story for more.

Keeping up with climate

The EPA released new rules last week that will limit emissions from new vehicles sold in the US, beginning in 2027. The policy is another big boost for EVs. The problem is, the country isn’t building chargers quickly enough to keep up. Here’s what the new rules might mean and how charging infrastructure will need to grow to keep up. (MIT Technology Review

We can build more fire-resistant structures today than we used to, and urban planners have more strategies to slow down blazes. Changing how people react to wildfires could be the hardest part of adapting. (MIT Technology Review)

EV charging was a constant topic of discussion at one of the country’s biggest auto shows in New York earlier this month. (Canary Media)

I find heat pumps fascinating, but most people find them a little … boring. Three studios took a crack at rebranding them. (Bloomberg)

→ Find out more about how a heat pump works. (MIT Technology Review)

Hydrogen can be a tool to fight climate change—or make things worse. This is a great breakdown of how details matter when it comes to the fuel. (New York Times Opinion)

Lithium-ion batteries can help support renewables like wind and solar by saving energy for when it’s needed. But some communities are scared about what happens if energy storage facilities catch fire. (Inside Climate News)

Fusion energy might be on its way to finally becoming a reality. But even if we see fusion power plants this century, they probably won’t provide the cheap, limitless energy everyone dreams about. (Wired)

→ Here’s what’s really going on with fusion energy. (MIT Technology Review)

This startup has a new way to generate electricity using water: instead of building massive concrete dams or disturbing ecosystems in rivers, it is building hydropower systems in canals. (Associated Press

Texas leads US states in renewable power generation. But new legislation could hinder progress. (Inside Climate News)

The hottest new climate technology is bricks

A handful of startups think bricks that hold heat could be the key to bringing renewable energy to some of the world’s biggest polluters.

Industries that make products ranging from steel to baby food require a lot of heat—most of which is currently generated by burning fossil fuels like natural gas. Heavy industry makes up about a quarter of worldwide emissions, and alternative power sources that produce fewer greenhouse gases (like wind and solar) can’t consistently generate the heat that factories need to manufacture their wares.

Enter heat batteries. A growing number of companies are working to deploy systems that can capture heat generated by clean electricity and store it for later in stacks of bricks. Many of these systems use simple designs and commercially available materials, and they could be built quickly, anywhere they’re needed. One demonstration in California started up earlier this year, and other test systems are following close behind. They’re still in early stages, but heat storage systems have the potential to help wean industries off fossil fuels.

The toaster of the future

One key to heat batteries’ potential success is their simplicity. “If you want to make it to giant scale, everybody ought to agree that it’s boring and reliable,” says John O’Donnell, CEO of California-based heat storage startup Rondo Energy.

The startup deployed its first commercial pilot in March at an ethanol plant in California. It’s basically a carefully designed stack of bricks.  

In Rondo’s system, electricity travels through a heating element, where it’s transformed into heat. It’s the same mechanism that a toaster uses, O’Donnell says—just a lot bigger and hotter. The heat then radiates through the stack of bricks, warming them up to temperatures that can reach over 1,500 °C (2,700 °F).

The insulated steel container housing the bricks can keep them hot for hours or even days. When it’s time to use the trapped heat, fans blow air through the bricks. The air can reach temperatures of up to 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) as it travels through the gaps.

How the final heat then is used will depend on the commercial process, O’Donnell says, though many facilities will probably use it to turn water into high-pressure steam. 

At Rondo’s pilot project at a biofuel plant in California, steam is used during the fermentation process that produces ethanol. Many other industrial processes use steam for controlling temperature in reactors or in other steps, like purification.  

Heat batteries could also be specially designed for higher-temperature processes that don’t use steam today, like cement and steel production, which require temperatures over 1,000 °C. 

Many industrial processes run 24 hours a day, so they’ll need constant heating. By carefully controlling the heat transfer, Rondo’s system can charge quickly, taking advantage of short periods when electricity is cheap because renewable sources are available. The startup’s heat batteries will probably require about four hours of charging to be able to provide heat constantly, day and night.

A “monstrous” amount of heat

One of the major challenges for heat storage technologies will be building enough systems to meet heavy industry’s huge energy demand. The sector uses a “monstrous” amount of heat, says Rebecca Dell, senior director of industry at ClimateWorks. Of all the energy used each year in industry, about three-quarters is in the form of heat, while only one-quarter today is electricity. Industrial heat makes up about 20% of total global energy demand. 

Fossil fuels have been the obvious, most economical way to power these massive industrial processes, but the prices of wind and solar power have fallen by over 90% over the past several decades. Dell says that’s opened the door for electricity to play a bigger role across industry.

“We’re at this magnificent moment where we can stop burning stuff for our heat and have it be cheaper,” O’Donnell says.

There are a few other potential options for using cheap renewable energy in industry. Some facilities could be adjusted to use electricity directly, instead of high heat. Companies are working on electrochemical processes to make cement and steel, for example, though replacing all the infrastructure in existing plants could take decades. Using electricity to generate hydrogen, which can later be burned for electricity, is another potential route, though in many cases it’s still cost-prohibitive and inefficient. 

Any effort to fulfill industry’s massive heat demand will require dramatic expansions in electricity generation. A standard cement plant uses about 250 megawatts of energy, mostly in the form of heat, all the time, Dell says. That’s about 250,000 residents’ worth of power, so electrifying a large industrial facility will mean adding electricity demand equivalent to that of a small city.

One brick at a time

Rondo isn’t alone in its quest to deploy heat batteries in industry. Antora Energy, based in California, is also building heat storage systems, using carbon. “It’s super simple—it’s literally just solid blocks,” says cofounder and COO Justin Briggs.

Instead of using a separate heating element (like Rondo’s “toaster coil”) to turn electricity into heat, Antora’s system will use carbon blocks as a resistive heater, so they’ll both generate and store heat. This could cut down on costs and complexity, Briggs explains. But the choice will also mean the system needs to be carefully enclosed, since graphite and other forms of carbon can degrade at high temperatures in the air.

Instead of just supplying heat to industry, Antora plans to offer an option to provide electricity as well. The startup’s approach relies on thermophotovoltaics—devices similar to the solar panels that capture energy from the sun. Antora’s equipment instead captures heat energy radiating from the hot blocks, turning it into electricity.

While heat-to-heat storage systems can exceed 90% efficiency, turning heat to electricity is much harder. Antora’s devices will be less than 50% efficient when used for electricity, in the same ballpark as many conventional gas turbines in use today.

Antora is currently building its first pilot system in Fresno, California. The system will be about the size of a shipping container and should be operational later this year.

Even using commercially available materials, it’ll take a while for heat storage to prove its role to manufacturers and make a meaningful dent in industrial emissions. But the technology could be one building block of a new, climate-friendly industrial sector. “We have all the tools we need to transform to a zero-carbon economy,” O’Donnell says. Now it’s time to build them.

These aircraft could change how we fly

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

This week I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole and developed a mild obsession with flying cars—or the version of them that’s hot right now in Silicon Valley, at least. 

Some companies think it’s time the aviation industry got a makeover, and many are betting it’ll come in the form of eVTOLs: electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles. It’s a horrible acronym for small aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a plane. (Typically, it’s pronounced ee-vee-toll, in case you were wondering.)

If eVTOLs can get off the ground and gain regulatory approval, they could change how we think about flight. But that’s a big “if,” and there are other questions for the industry to answer before these new flying vehicles become a reality. So let’s take a look at eVTOLs: what they are, how close they are to taking off, and whether any of this is a good idea for the climate. 

What are eVTOLs, and why are so many companies building them?

There’s a range of possibilities for new electric aircraft, but the eVTOL category basically includes anything that takes off and lands vertically. Most of them look like robotic bugs to me, or something a villain might fly in a James Bond movie. 

Trying to compare eVTOLs to existing aircraft is tricky. Some call them flying cars, though they typically aren’t really designed to move around on the ground. They’re probably closest to an electric version of helicopters, though they fly using different mechanics.

Whatever you call them, there are literally hundreds of companies working to bring eVTOLs to the skies. 

A lot of the excitement centers on the fact that the vehicles could open up new uses for flight: completing last-mile delivery to rural places, transporting people or organs to hospitals, or avoiding the traffic in big metropolitan areas.

I will say that some of these needs could probably be filled by a robust public transit system. (We shouldn’t have to fly to get easily from Newark Airport to downtown Manhattan, a service one eVTOL company plans to offer.) But given the current state of our infrastructure, especially in the US, eVTOL companies see an opening to get people around faster. 

What’s the status of these things? 

There are some really well-funded eVTOL startups working to build the next big thing in flight. Two of the biggest, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, are based in the US. There are also some late-stage startups based in Europe, including Lilium in Germany. 

So far, no eVTOLs have launched commercially, though several companies have announced plans to enter commercial service in 2025. 

Right now, companies are testing prototypes and showing off what they can do—a company called Autoflight broke the world record for the longest eVTOL flight just last month. The aircraft covered just over 155 miles (250 kilometers)—about a mile longer than the previous record, held by Joby. 

But despite impressive test flights, questions remain about how close we really are to seeing commercial eVTOLs hit the skies. 

Getting regulatory approval could be a sticking point. Agencies in the US and EU both plan to classify eVTOLs as a special class of aircraft, meaning they’ll be subject to a different set of requirements from conventional aircraft. There’s still some uncertainty about how that whole process will go down, especially in the US.

Still, some companies are charging ahead. Archer began construction on a manufacturing facility in Georgia earlier this year, which could begin production as soon as 2024 and make up to 650 aircraft per year. 

What would eVTOLs mean for climate? 

Swapping out fossil-fuel-powered aircraft for electric ones could be a climate win.

When it comes to more conventional aircraft, an electric plane charged using an average grid could cut emissions by about 50% compared with a fossil-fuel-powered plane. If electric planes are instead charged using all renewables, emissions cuts jump to a maximum of 88%. Most of those remaining emissions come from battery production—because they’ll probably be flying and charging a lot, batteries might need replacing every year or so. 

But when it comes to eVTOLs’ impact on climate, it’s important to consider that the vehicles might not be replacing fossil-fuel-powered airplanes. The idea is to expand flight, so eVTOLs might need to be compared with ground-based vehicles like trains or cars. 

There’s not a ton of analysis out there yet, but one study found that an eVTOL traveling 60 miles (100 kilometers) would produce about 30% less in emissions than a gas-powered car. But the eVTOL would be about 30% worse than an electric vehicle. 

Related reading

  • For more on eVTOLs, including a look at one company that’s decided to start out with a more conventional plane, check out this story.

Another thing

Daylight saving time is trash, and I’m not afraid to say it. (Okay, the time change might be impacting my mood a little bit.) 

Setting the clocks back an hour in the fall and forward an hour in the spring started as an energy-saving measure. But in addition to being bad for our health, it doesn’t even really work very well. 

Artificially changing the time doesn’t seem to affect behavior all that much. And most analyses tracking electricity have found a minimal effect on electricity use. One 2017 analysis found about a 0.34% reduction, and a 2008 Department of Energy report to Congress put the effect at about 0.5%. 

We all need to just agree on an alternative and stop this madness. All right, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Keeping up with climate

New policies could drive a boom in US mining and mineral processing. My colleague James Temple sat down with David Turk, deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, to talk about what the future of critical minerals looks like for the US. (MIT Technology Review

The Biden administration approved a major new oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists point out that increasing fossil-fuel production doesn’t align with climate goals. (Associated Press)

Silicon Valley Bank melted down on Friday, raising concerns for many tech startups. Sunday night, the government said insurance would cover all deposits, so everyone’s getting their money back. Crisis averted … for now. (Axios

The US Department of Energy announced a $6 billion program to cut emissions from heavy industry. The funding could offer key help for an industry that accounts for about a quarter of the US’s emissions. (Canary Media)

→ Last year, I wrote about a startup trying to reinvent steel production with electricity. (MIT Technology Review

Mmmmm … microbe milk. Some companies hope products made by engineered yeasts or fungi can compete with cow and plant milks. (Washington Post)

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is in trouble, with climate change and increased water demand threatening to turn it into a “toxic dust bomb.” But a lake in California could provide a blueprint to avoiding catastrophe. (Grid News)

I loved these photos of floatovoltaics, or solar panels that float on bodies of water. That’s one way to solve possible concerns about land use. (Bloomberg)

Apple added a new setting on iPhones to align charging with availability of renewable energy. The feature is a small but interesting case of demand response, which could be useful for bigger energy consumers like electric vehicles. (Washington Post)

Why you might recycle a battery—and how to do it

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

When strangers find out that I’m a climate technology reporter, they often have a lot of questions for me, or concerns to share. Some have heard that birds fly into wind turbines. Or that too many charging EVs will cause power outages.

Some of these questions are overblown, but sometimes, in one of these questions, someone will hit on one of the real challenges of climate technologies.

That second bucket is where I’d put most things I hear about the physical stuff critical to the energy transition. What do we do with solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries when we’re done with them? And where are we going to get enough of the materials we need to make new ones? 

Concerns about the origins and fate of these materials deserve to be taken seriously, which is why I’ve spent the last few months thinking a lot about one of this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies: battery recycling. I hope you’ll read the feature story I put together, but first let’s take a quick look at why this topic has lived rent-free inside my brain for so long. 

As I wrote about a few weeks ago in the newsletter, batteries are key to both electric vehicles and energy storage on the grid. So more EVs and more support for renewable energy will mean we’ll need more batteries.

This new demand presents two related problems. First, we need to find enough metals to make all those batteries—and mining can be destructive for people and the environment, as well as downright expensive. Second, since batteries will last a finite amount of time, they’ll eventually become trash that we’ll need to deal with. 

You see where I’m going with this … battery recycling could be the piece that closes the loop. If we can turn old batteries into new ones, we solve both the materials supply problem and the trash problem. 

It’s just a question of actually pulling it off.

The good news is that batteries are, at least in theory, good candidates for recycling: the metals inside them are valuable and don’t really degrade much over time, so they can be reused over and over again. Today, the lead-acid batteries in gas-powered cars are among the most highly recycled products in the world. (Other household batteries can be recycled too, so do check before tossing them out.)

Lithium-ion batteries, which are used in EVs, are a more recent invention; they came into the picture in the 1990s in small electronic devices before finding a market in electric vehicles. As their use has grown, so too have efforts to recycle them. 

Recycling companies’ processes all look about the same to an outside observer. Batteries are disassembled and crushed up, and the resulting powder is dissolved before being subjected to various chemical techniques. But the details will be a key deciding factor in how much of the valuable materials recyclers can recover, and therefore how much money they can make. 

Thanks to advances in these processes, the prospects for building a business around battery recycling have improved. The same dynamic is going on in solar panel recycling, where companies are working to recover silver and other expensive materials from the devices. 

On a personal level, I think finding ways to recycle and repurpose materials in order to cut down on waste and destructive mining is a worthwhile goal in itself. But profitability is a surefire way to make battery recycling more likely to happen. 

We’re still in the early days of battery recycling. China has funded and encouraged a massive industry, and now Europe and North America are catching up, with companies raising  hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and building multibillion-dollar facilities.

For my deep dive into battery recycling, I took a look at one of these companies, Redwood Materials. If you want to learn more about what Redwood is trying to do, or the challenges the company is facing, check out my feature story that came out yesterday. I also got to speak with JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials and former chief technology officer at Tesla, about where he thinks the industry is headed. You can find an edited version of our conversation here

Keeping up with Climate

Climeworks announced that it’s begun removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at its Orca plant in Iceland. (Wall Street Journal)

→ The plant may not be big, but this is a major step for carbon removal, which was one of our breakthrough technologies in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)

The western US is seeing record snowfall. Don’t expect it to make a dent in the drought, though. (Grid News)

Sublime Systems raised $40 million to help develop its low-carbon cement technology. (Bloomberg)

→ Using electricity for heavy industry could help reduce climate impacts from “hard-to-solve” sectors. (MIT Technology Review)

The cooking oil used for your french fries today could power your flight tomorrow. Ride along with collectors that gather grease for use in new aviation fuels. (Canary Media)

→ New fuels will be key in cutting emissions from air travel. (MIT Technology Review)

The Hummer EV, weighing in at about 9,000 pounds, is fueling backlash against electric trucks and SUVs. Critics say massive vehicles, electric or not, are dangerous and wasteful. (E&E News)

A new project that will pump air deep underground could help store renewable energy on the grid. (LA Times)

It was supposed to be the UK’s Tesla. But without enough funding or customers, Britishvolt went bankrupt. (Wired)

This is where Tesla’s former CTO thinks battery recycling is headed

Battery recycling is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2023. Explore the rest of the list here.

As Tesla’s former chief technology officer, JB Straubel has been a major player in bringing electric vehicles to the world. He’s often credited with inventing key pieces of Tesla’s battery technology and establishing the company’s charging network. After leaving Tesla in 2019, Straubel began a new venture: Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company. 

Redwood has raised nearly $800 million in venture funding. It’s building a billion-dollar facility in Nevada and recently announced plans for a second campus outside Charleston, South Carolina. In these plants, Redwood plans to extract valuable metals such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel from used batteries and produce cathodes and anodes for new ones. 

I spoke to Straubel about the role he sees battery recycling playing in the transition to renewable energy, his plans for Redwood, and what’s next. You can read my full piece about battery recycling here.

Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. (Note: I worked as an intern at Tesla in 2016, while Straubel was still CTO, though we didn’t work directly together.

Why did you decide to leave Tesla, and why did you pick battery recycling as your next step? 

Certainly Tesla was an amazing adventure, but as it was succeeding, I think it was becoming more obvious that battery scaling would present the need to get so many more raw materials, components, and batteries themselves. That was this looming bottleneck and challenge for the whole industry, even way back then. And I think it’s even more clear today. 

The idea was pretty unconventional at the time. Even your question kind of hints at it—it’s like, why did you leave this glamorous, exciting high-performance car company to go work on garbage? I think entrepreneurship involves being a little bit contrarian. And I think to really make meaningful innovation, it’s often not very conventional.

Why do you see battery recycling as an important part of the energy transition? 

Increasingly, the solution to some of these sustainability problems is to electrify it and to add a battery to it, which is great, and I spent the majority of my career championing that and helping accelerate that. And if we don’t electrify everything, I think our climate goals are completely sunk. But at the same time, it’s a phenomenal amount of batteries. And I just think we really need to figure out a robust solution at the end of life. 

I think this entire new sustainable economy as we’re envisioning it, with everything electrified, simply can’t work unless you have a closed loop for the raw materials. There aren’t enough new raw materials to keep building and throwing them away; it would fundamentally be impossible. 

Battery recycling is an intuitive solution to those two issues, but tell me more about the technical challenge of pulling it off, and how it would work.

It’s more complicated than I think many people appreciate. There’s just a whole ton of chemistry, chemical engineering, and production engineering that has to happen to make and refine all of the components that go into a battery. It’s not just a sorting or garbage management problem. 

There’s a lot of room for innovation, and these things haven’t been well optimized, or even done at all in some cases. So that’s really the fun stuff as an engineer, where you get to invent and innovate things that haven’t been done two, three, four times already.  

But something that isn’t intuitive is just what a high level of reusability the metals inside of a battery have. All of those materials we put into a battery and into an EV don’t go anywhere. They’re all still there. They don’t get degraded, they don’t get compromised—99% of those metals, or perhaps more, can be reused again and again and again. Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

I don’t believe we’re appropriately internalizing how bad climate change is going to be.

JB Straubel

There are not going to be a lot of electric vehicles coming off the roads for a long time. How are you thinking about navigating that and facing shortages in your supply of used batteries? 

I really see our position as a sustainable battery materials company. One of our key objectives and goals is to look at the very long term and to make sure we’re architecting the most efficient systems for the long term, where recycled material content is the majority of supply. 

But in the meantime, we’re taking a pragmatic view. We have to blend in a certain amount of virgin material—whatever we can get in the most environmentally friendly way—to augment the ramp-up while we need to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Was that a clear decision to you, to supplement with mined material versus sticking to only using recycled material? 

I’d say it’s a very natural decision to make. Our goal is to help decarbonize batteries and reduce the energy impact and the embedded CO2. And I think it’s better for the world to remove a fossil-fuel vehicle than to say, “Well, we can’t build an electric vehicle because we don’t have enough recycled material.” 

When I visited, I definitely felt a sense of urgency. Do you feel like you’re moving fast enough, and do you feel like this industry is moving fast enough? 

I generally don’t think we’re going fast enough. I don’t think anyone is. You know, I do have this sense of paranoia and urgency and almost—not exactly—panic. That’s not helpful. 

But I guess it really derives from a deep feeling that I don’t believe we’re appropriately internalizing how bad climate change is going to be. So I guess I have this anxiety and fear that it’s going to get a whole lot worse than I think most people are expecting. 

And there’s such inertia to it, so now is our only time to really prepare and react. And the scale of all this is so big that even when we’re running flat out as fast as we can, with all that urgency that you felt and hopefully more, it’ll still take us decades.

Do you feel you can handle any battery chemistry that industry comes up with? What if everybody goes to cheaper chemistries like iron phosphate, or if everybody starts moving to really different technologies, like solid state?

I’m really genuinely pretty agnostic on this. I want to make sure that we are focused on the bigger picture, which is figuring out how we enable a transition to sustainability overall. And therefore, we really are rooting for whatever battery technology ends up having the best performance.

And I think it will be a mix. We’re going to see a bigger diversity of battery chemistries and technologies. 

So when we’re designing this circular system, we need to think about all the different technologies, and they have pros and cons. Some are more challenging in different ways. Obviously, iron phosphate has a lower total commodity metal value, but it’s certainly not zero. There’s a great opportunity to recycle lithium and copper from those. So I think each one has its own set of characteristics that we have to manage.

What do you see as Redwood’s biggest challenge in the next year, and then in the long term?

Over the next year, we’re just in an incredibly rapid growth and deployment phase. We are innovating across a whole bunch of different areas simultaneously. It’s really exciting and fun, but it’s also just quite challenging to manage all of the parallel threads as we’re doing it. It’s like a huge multiplayer game of chess or something. 

In the longer term, it’s increasingly going to be about scale and efficiency of scaling. This is just a huge, huge industry. The physical size of these facilities is massive, the amount of materials is massive, and the capital requirements are really massive as well. So I think over decades into the future, I’d say, where our focus and challenges will be is making sure we’re hyper-efficient about scaling up to terawatt-hour scale, literally.

Two climate technologies that matter

It’s been an exciting week here at MIT Technology Review, because on Monday we released our 2023 list of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies! This is always one of my favorite times of the year, when we get to take a hard look at technologies that will matter in the upcoming year and beyond. And this year, two of the items on the list are related to climate and energy.

Read on to find out what they are (if you haven’t already peeked at the list by now) and learn a little bit about why we picked them. Also, there’s been a lot of news floating around about gas stoves. So if you’re confused by the hullabaloo, I’ve got you covered with what you need to know. 

The 2023 Breakthrough Technologies

It’s finally here—our 2023 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Two climate items made the list this year: electric vehicles and battery recycling!

We’ve been working on this list since July, sifting through our coverage and keeping our eyes on the news to pick out technologies we think will be important. 

If you haven’t perused it yet, a good place to start is the introductory essay from my editor, David Rotman. In it, David talks about the government’s role in innovation and explains what the recent embrace of industrial policy, both in the US and in many other countries, will mean for future technologies. In a nutshell, Silicon Valley’s approach isn’t doing a great job boosting productivity and transforming the economy. But there’s another way. 

If you’re interested in understanding what it takes to help technologies make an impact, or if you just want to learn what the phrase “industrial policy” really means, I’d highly recommend giving the piece a read before diving into the rest of the list. 

Now, on to the breakthroughs, starting with the inevitable EV.

I know some of you might be thinking that electric vehicles aren’t exactly new. The first Tesla Roadsters were delivered 15 years ago (yes, 2008 was 15 years ago), and small numbers of other electric cars, like the GM EV1, had even made it onto roads in the 1990s. 

EVs made the list this year not because of any one technical milestone, but because they’ve reached critical mass. They’re a real commercial contender now, reaching about 13% of global new vehicle sales in 2022. This is a big moment for electric vehicles, marked by progress not only in technology but also in infrastructure, manufacturing, and consumer acceptance. 

It was a tricky thing to crystallize exactly what about EVs should be on the list this year. Different forms of this idea came up early on when we were planning, with several members on the team proposing ideas that touched on EVs in some way. 

My original pitch was the EV pickup. Trucks are massively popular in the US: the top three vehicles sold in the country in 2022 were pickups, with the Ford F-series topping the list. So the release of the new electric version of the F-150 (the Lightning), along with other major releases from GMC and Rivian, felt like a significant moment. 

But the rollout for EVs looks so different around the world. While people in the US are chasing bigger EVs, in other countries vehicles are shrinking. The Hongguang Mini in China, a minicar that costs less than $5,000, is skyrocketing in popularity, and two- and three-wheeled vehicles are surging in India. 

So ultimately, electric trucks would have been a limited representative of this moment for EVs. (Not to mention there are major issues with supersizing vehicles.) 

But around the world, it’s increasingly becoming clear: the age of the electric vehicle is here. 

The other climate item on the list, covered by yours truly, is battery recycling.

Lithium-ion batteries in EVs, as well as in devices like cell phones and laptops, contain valuable materials that can be reused for new batteries.

Developments in the recycling process are helping companies recover more of those valuable metals and other materials. Today, the market for battery recycling is concentrated in China. But North American companies like Redwood Materials, Li-Cycle, and Ascend Elements are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funding and building factories that could be a key part of the battery materials ecosystem for decades to come. 

That’s all I’m going to say about that for now, because (spoiler alert!) we’ll be diving deeper on battery recycling next week in the newsletter. (If you haven’t already, be sure to go back and read the very first issue of The Spark from last October for a sneak peek at what’s coming …)

Find the full list of breakthrough technologies here. They’re all fascinating and worth learning about, but I’d especially recommend checking out CRISPR for high cholesterol and ancient DNA analysis. Plus, you can vote for what you think the 11th technology should be! 

Another thing

What’s the fuss about with gas stoves?

On Monday, a US Consumer Product Safety Commission representative told Bloomberg News the group would consider new regulations for gas stoves. The appliances have been in the news since a study published in December found that about 12% of current childhood asthma in the US can be attributed to them. 

This statement from the CPSC isn’t as dramatic as some headlines are making it sound, though. A member of the federal agency told Bloomberg that even issuing a proposal in the coming year would be “on the quick side.” He also later clarified on Twitter that regulations would apply to new products: “To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves.” The comments were enough to send Senator Joe Manchin into a tizzy, though. 

So, should you be worried about your gas stove?

There’s a growing body of research showing both health and climate risks

Last year, a study found that gas stoves release methane even when turned off, and confirmed that during cooking, they can emit nitrogen oxides (NOx) at levels that surpass standards set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. NOx are common pollutants also found in cigarette smoke and vehicle exhaust, and they can cause or aggravate respiratory problems, especially in children.

In addition to raising health concerns, the methane that leaks from stoves and the carbon dioxide released by burning natural gas are both greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. About 35% of households in the US cook with gas stoves. Rates are similar in Europe, with about 30% of energy for cooking coming from gas. 

Critics point out that we have bigger fish to fry when it comes to both climate and human health. And that’s probably true—cooking is a small piece of any individual’s natural-gas use, and likely only a sliver of total individual emissions. There are plenty of other sources of nitrogen oxides you probably encounter every day too (I’m looking at you, cars). 

What’s there to do about it?

Still, replacing your gas stove can help cut the harms to climate and health from cooking. It can be an expensive prospect, but new policy in the US could make replacing gas-powered stoves significantly cheaper. Tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act could help cover the cost of new electric appliances for middle- and low-income households. 

And if you are stuck with a gas stove (like I am, in my rental), you can help with ventilation by using range exhausts and opening windows when cooking, which is a good practice even if you’re using an electric or induction range. And if you happen to be researching new stoves, consider that industry groups are working hard to influence public opinion, so make sure you’re getting information from sources worth trusting. 

Keeping up with Climate

Sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids smashed records in China last year, with over 5.67 million vehicles sold in 2022. The market for gas-powered cars shrank 13%. (Wall Street Journal)

→ Hybrid cars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. (MIT Technology Review)

→ China is betting on another alternative: methanol-powered cars (MIT Technology Review)

The most talked-about climate change papers last year included research on covid-19, climate tipping points, and the Arctic. (CarbonBrief)

If you’ve ever wanted backup debunking basic climate change myths at a party or family dinner, this is a great starter pack. (Discover)

Nearly 200 countries just agreed to conserve 30% of land and seas by 2030. But details about how to reach that goal, often called 30×30, are a bit fuzzy. (Grist)

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is a fascinating ecosystem. But unless lawmakers make changes to allow more water to flow into it, the lake could dry up in the next five years. (CNN)

A new UN report confirms that the atmospheric ozone layer is on its way to recovering. Most parts should be back to their 1980 state by 2040. (NPR)

→ In the 1987 Montreal Protocol, dozens of countries agreed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and other synthetic chemicals that were harming the ozone layer. In 2007, we took a look back at what the treaty meant for the world. (MIT Technology Review)

→ The action also prevented some warming we would have otherwise seen. (MIT Technology Review)

US emissions rose about 1% last year. The good news is that they could have risen faster, given the pace of economic growth, but we need to cut emissions to make progress on addressing climate change. (Vox)