{"id":153322,"date":"2024-07-02T12:24:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=153322"},"modified":"2025-03-26T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T18:55:12","slug":"the-race-to-a-battery-powered-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2024\/07\/02\/the-race-to-a-battery-powered-future\/","title":{"rendered":"The Race to a Battery-Powered Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We know that to have a green future, the entire world needs to shift from fossil fuel\u2013generated power to renewable energy. And as countries<span>\u00a0<\/span><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sustainability\/climate-energy\/cop28-plan-triple-renewables-is-doable-not-easy-companies-say-2023-12-12\/\" target=\"_blank\">agree on tripling solar and wind capacity<\/a>, there are still major hurdles in the plan: one is that existing batteries aren\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of storing energy for later use is old, but in order to move society toward clean energy, scientists and engineers are experimenting with the fundamental elements of batteries, finding better ways to source raw materials, and even testing more outlandish energy storage ideas\u2014like electricity-conducting ceramics. Experts agree that batteries will be a vital resource to ensure power is always on tap, no matter when energy is collected from renewable sources\u2014whether in very sunny months or in cloudy rainy seasons.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s projected that the US will have at least 26 million battery-powered electric vehicles on the road by 2030, most of which use<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.energy.gov\/science\/doe-explainsbatteries\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lithium-ion batteries<\/a>, the same kind as in laptops, phones, and other electronics. This will make the demand for battery minerals and metals higher than ever before. But is our current technology enough to power the future, and is it truly sustainable?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we look at really transitioning to electric vehicles, and to renewables that need more grid-level storage, we won\u2019t be able to get there with just lithium ion,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/emily-ryan-ph-d\/\">Emily Ryan<\/a>, a Boston University College of Engineering associate professor of mechanical engineering. She studies alternative materials for constructing batteries. Mining current raw materials, like lithium and cobalt, can cause major environmental hazards and unsafe working conditions, and right now there\u2019s no reliable way to recycle batteries once they\u2019re spent, creating a waste nightmare.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2024\/the-race-to-a-battery-powered-future\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Brink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We know that to have a green future, the entire world needs to shift from fossil fuel\u2013generated power to renewable energy. And as countries\u00a0agree on tripling solar and wind capacity, there are still major hurdles in the plan: one is that existing batteries aren\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21681,"featured_media":153321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,1092,1222],"tags":[378,589],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21681"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161181,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153322\/revisions\/161181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}