Insight 11: Sodium-ion Batteries: Inexpensive and Sustainable Energy Storage
Summary
Sodium-ion batteries are an emerging battery technology with promising cost, safety, sustainability and performance advantages over current commercialised lithium-ion batteries. Key advantages include the use of widely available and inexpensive raw materials and a rapidly scalable technology based around existing lithium-ion production methods. These properties make sodium-ion batteries especially important in meeting global demand for carbon-neutral energy storage solutions.
Focus of the Insight
Sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) are attractive prospects for stationary storage applications where lifetime operational cost, not weight or volume, is the overriding factor. Recent improvements in performance, particularly in energy density, mean NIBs are reaching the level necessary to justify the exploration of commercial scale-up. NIBs are most likely to compete with existing lead-acid and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. However, before this can happen, developers must reduce cost by: (1) improving technical performance; (2) establishing supply chains; and (3) achieving economies of scale.
Conclusion
NIBs share many of the strengths of LIBs. They have the same basic form and operating principles as LIBs, but they also offer substantial performance and cost advantages, with further improvements expected in the coming years.
Intense scientific investigation of sodium-ion technology is a relatively recent occurrence. Sodium-ion chemistry is comparatively unexplored, but due to their similarity and the ability to use the same manufacturing plants as LIBs, decades of experience can be harnessed.There are relatively few patents in NIBs, but UK and international innovation is accelerating. There is now a window of opportunity to build a critical mass of intellectual property in the UK and create value and jobs for the UK economy.
NIBs still require focused research and significant innovation but, unlike many new technologies, there is no need for the development of new manufacturing processes to reach market. With safety, sustainability, power and cycle life advantages, NIBs are already on the cusp of commercial application in large and growing markets. Coupling increased volumes with improvements in functional materials will see the widespread adoption of NIBs.
NIBs offer the UK an opportunity to take a market-leading role. The UK is already an established leader in the field and home to internationally important development companies. By building on current advantages, the UK can establish large scale domestic manufacturing with additional economic benefits across the supply chain and from downstream applications. In doing so, this new domestic supply chain should give UK companies a foot-in-the-door of the international battery market, opening up substantial new markets, generating jobs and significant economic value for the UK. The Faraday Institution’s NEXGENNA project is working with the leading UK companies to accelerate commercialisation.
However, if the UK is to seize the opportunity to maintain and expand its position in the face of accelerating international competition it must make significant and urgent investments.
These investments might include:
- An expansion of support for sodium-ion research to support the transition to manufacture
- Investments in demonstration projects to support industry efforts to show reliability and manufacture at scale.
- Significant incentives and support to encourage the establishment of large-scale sodium-ion battery manufacture in the UK.
Sodium-ion batteries offer inexpensive, sustainable, safe and rapidly scalable energy storage suitable for an expanding list of applications and offer a significant business opportunity for the UK.