Battery technology is big business and will be even bigger over coming years as a global energy and transport infrastructure built on and for hydrocarbons continues to transition towards electrification.

The most significant steps in that process are still at a relatively early stage but progress is accelerating. The electrification of cars, vans, trucks, lorries and even ships and aircraft and the phasing out of power plants that turn fossil fuels into electricity is underway but will take at least a couple of decades to complete – almost certainly significantly longer in some parts of the world.

Battery technology has arguably been the most significant bottleneck to weaning ourselves off polluting fossil fuels sooner. Efficient batteries with big capacities that can be charged quickly and aren’t too heavy or take up too much space are the key to unlocking the full potential of electrification.

Battery technology also has to be cost-efficient and supply lines secure, which ideally means well diversified. The oil and gas economy of the past century or so has very clearly presented the geopolitical risk inherent in the supply of globally critical supplies being concentrated across limited locations.

Battery technology, fuelled by billions of dollars invested in R&D, has made strides. But progress is still largely lagging the technology infrastructure it makes possible. There is still a clear need for battery technologies to continue to improve to meet the current and future requirements of electrification across transport and energy infrastructures.

Investment is funding R&D on several different battery technologies but lithium out in front

Different battery technologies will compete with each other but also likely have different optimal use cases. There won’t necessarily be one battery technology that dominates the electrification of the global economy – it’s more likely there will be a range of different battery technologies for

Diversification in battery technologies will also make supply lines more robust and reduce supply security concerns.

Lithium battery technology is currently out in front of the race to power electrification but there are several other battery technologies attracting significant R&D investment, including:

• Solid-state batteries
• Lithium-sulfur batteries
• Cobalt-free lithium-ion batteries
• Sodium-ion batteries
• Iron-air batteries
• Zinc-based batteries

They are all at different stages of the R&D process and come with varying strengths and weaknesses.

Is sodium battery technology a future rival to lithium dominance?

These is, however, currently a wave of buzz about a new battery technology some believe has the potential to challenge lithium as the dominant future category – sodium batteries.

One of the biggest drawbacks of lithium battery technology is that the supply of lithium it relies upon is geographically concentrated to an even greater extent than oil and gas.

Major countries in worldwide lithium mine production in 2022(in metric tons)

Source: Statista

Lithium refineries are even more geographically concentrated – over half of the world’s lithium refining capacity is found in China.

That is a valid concern, especially against the backdrop of Europe being forced to painfully wean itself reliance on Russian gas over the past 2 years. And the fact that China announced restrictions on the export of graphite earlier this month, another important element used in lithium batteries China is the world’s largest exporter of. It accounts for over 70% of global supplies.

In response to the geopolitical risk associated with future overreliance on lithium batteries, a number of companies have invested significantly in the R&D of sodium batteries as an alternative.

Sodium, best known for making up about 40% of the chemical structure of salt, alongside 60% chlorine, is lithium’s “chemical cousin” and has very similar qualities – which make it good for batteries.

There’s also no shortage of it – it’s thousands of times more abundant than lithium and also far cheaper to mine and refine. It can even be separated from sea water relatively easily.

Other advantages of sodium as the core element of battery technology is that sodium batteries can use electrodes made from iron and manganese, which are also relatively abundant and can be found in many places around the world.

By contrast, the electrodes used by the most performant lithium batteries are made from cobalt and nickel. Both of which are comparatively scarce, environmentally destructive to mine on land and proposals to instead mine from the seabed are hugely controversial.

A large part of the world’s supply of cobalt comes from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where The Economist notes, “child labour is common and working conditions are dire”.

The big advantage of sodium battery technology is that the chemical components are cheap, easy to get at, abundant and geographically dispersed. That means that a scaled up sodium battery technology industry would be expected to produce cheaper batteries than lithium rivals.

What are the downsides of sodium battery technology?

Sodium battery technology is, however, more likely to be most successful as a rival to lithium in energy infrastructure rather than in transport networks – and particularly electric vehicles.

Sodium is much heavier than lithium, which means sodium batteries are respectively much heavier than lithium alternatives. That means they are unlikely to be a good fit when low weight is important – as it is for vehicle batteries. Despite that, a handful of Chinese EV makers have started to put sodium batteries in electric vehicles.

Sodium battery technology is, however, likely to be a good fit for things like grid storage or home batteries that charge from domestic renewable sources like solar panels, or from the grid during off-peak times. Weight is not a factor for stationary batteries and lower prices will be an important selling point.

Sodium battery technology also has plenty of catching up to do on lithium – the first lithium-ion batteries were sold commercially back in the 1990s, three decades ago. They have benefitted from many years of investment in R&D since.

However, the advantages of sodium battery technology, from supply security to cost and the lower environmental impact of sourcing their chemical components makes their further development strategically important.

Europe and the USA are both committed to huge funding programmes for “green” technology subsidies and battery technologies are considered a crucial pillars of a low carbon future. There will be a lot more money invested in battery technology over the next several years. The lobby for a solid chunk of that to be invested in further developing sodium battery technology is growing and it’s easy to see why.