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Many experts believe advanced energy storage systems hold the key to the next energy revolution. It is a belief that is spurring corporate and government research into grid-scale battery systems. In the U.S., leading the charge on the policy front is California, which ordered the state's major electric utilities to make preparations to buy a total of 1,325 MW of electricity storage capacity by 2020.
In his new book, reporter Steve LeVine chronicles what he calls the "battery wars," where not only individual scientists, but countries are competing against each other to build the better battery.
Source: Viking Press
While climate change could be mitigated by mass deployment of advanced energy storage systems, money is the driving force behind the battery wars. Battery-enabled hybrid and electric vehicles could command sales of $78 billion by 2020, according to LeVine. If large-scale batteries could economically store electricity produced by wind farms and solar cells, the result could be an additional tens of billions of dollars in annual sales.
Beyond 2020, the dollar figures are expected to continue growing at a rapid pace. These new industries, LeVine predicts, could reach the scale of today's corporate behemoths, companies like Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co. and Toyota.
By 2030, advanced battery companies could increase into a $100 billion-a-year industry and the electric car business into several $100 billion-a-year corporations, LeVine writes in his book, "The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World," published in February by Viking Press. LeVine's previous book, "The Oil and the Glory," covered the rush to drill for oil in the Caspian Sea after the fall of the Soviet Union.
For decades, U.S. research and investment in batteries has trailed other countries. Japanese...