The final nail in the fossil fuel coffin

 From Just Have a Think

When he describes batteries as, say, 500 MW and 2000 MWh, what that means is that the battery can produce 500 MW of electricity for 4 hours (2000/500).  MW is a measure of the output, MWh (or kWh in the case of an EV battery) in this context, is a measure of how much electricity has been stored.

We still don't have a cure for multi-day windless periods--dunkelflaute--but that may be the only place where we will still need gas peaker plants (for now).   For most of the world within 40 degrees of the equator, 8 hours of storage will be enough, as night demand is about two-thirds of average day-time demand.  This means that solar combined with 8 hours of storage will provide power 24/7.  And that's ignoring the huge capacity available with EVs.  For example, Australia has 16 million passenger vehicle and 4 million light commercial trucks.  At 40 kWh storage per EV, that totals to 800,000 MWh/ 800 GWh of stored electricity.  Obviously, only some of that is available at any given time, but even if merely one quarter is available, this would provide 200 GWh of storage.  Even before you add grid-scale batteries, which are about 23 GWh at the moment.

Battery costs to fall 90%

 

CATL (the world's largest battery manufacturer) has put its new sodium-ion battery into production, and will be starting mass production in December.

• They will initially cost half lithium-ion batteries.  Tesla's batteries cost ~$100/kWh.  CATL's goal is a cost of $10/kWh within a few years, as the technology is perfected and mass production increases.    
• They will last 10,000 cycles (compared to Tesla's 1,500), or 3.6 million miles.  That's million.  And even then, they will still have 80% of their original capacity.  Used as grid batteries and fully discharged every day, sodium-ion batteries will last 27 years.  After 60 years, they will still have 60% of their original capacity.
• So they won't just be cheap to buy, but will have very, very low LCOE/LCOS (levelised cost of storage): 90 cents per MWh of output (assuming a life of 30 years).   4 hours of storage will add just $3.50/MWh to solar electricity; 12 hours just $10.  This will completely remove the need for fossil fuel generation, except in high latitudes, and it will make even existing fully-depreciated and paid-off coal power stations wildly uneconomic.
• They will be able to be charged must faster than lithium-ion, capable of adding 520 km of charge in 5 minutes.
• They will operate over a much wider temperature range: from -40C to +70C.
• They are safe.  Unlike lithium-ion batteries, they won't catch fire even if they are pierced,
• Even their energy density is now respectable (sodium-ion batteries have hitherto had low energy densities), at 175 Wh/kg, comparable with the low end of lithium-ion.

The implications are staggering.  Solar costs continue to fall; battery costs will soon make 12 hours of storage economically feasible, and EV batteries will fall from $6,000 per car to $600, making even small EVs easily cheaper than petrol/diesel cars.

The transition from fossil fuel generation and petrol cars will accelerate.  Emissions from electricity generation and land transport make up ~50% of global emissions.   It seems certain that by 2040, these emissions will have mostly ended.  If we replace fossil fuel heating with heat pumps (and electric heating in high latitudes), this could cut emissions by another 10%.  

We still have to cut emissions from cement, iron and steel, air travel, sea transport and agriculture (a biggie), but we will have travelled a long way down the road to net-zero.

[Update 15/10/2025:  The costs are even lower than I thought.  Here's my updated analysis]

China is becoming the world's first electrostate

 From the ABC, Australia's national broadcaster.

In April this year, China installed more solar power than Australia has in all its history. In one month.

This isn’t a story about Australia’s poor track record on solar; Australia is a global leader. Rather, this shows the astonishing rate at which China is embracing renewable technologies across every aspect of its society.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking this transformation is driven by a moral obligation to act on climate change.

China’s reasons for this are less about arresting rising temperatures than its desire to stop relying on imported fossil fuels and to fix the pollution caused by them.

The superpower has put its economic might and willpower behind renewable technologies, and by doing so, is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era and bringing about the age of the electrostate.

“The whole modern industrial economy is built around fossil fuels. Now the whole world is moving away from that and that means that we are rebuilding our economy around emerging clean tech sectors,” said Muyi Yang, the lead China analyst at energy think tank Ember.

“Once the new direction is set, the momentum will become self-sustaining. It will make reversal impossible. I think China now has set its direction towards a clean energy future.

“Can you imagine that the Chinese government will say that, oh, we will go back to fossil car, not the electric cars? That won’t happen. That’s not possible … this momentum is becoming so strong.”

It’s hard to communicate the scale of China’s clean technology rollout but it helps to look back to recent history to appreciate the transformation.

China became the world’s factory at the end of the 20th century, manufacturing cheap, low-quality products. This industrialisation modernised the country but also caused widespread environmental damage and drastic air pollution.

The factories were powered by fossil fuels, causing China’s emissions to skyrocket and it to become the largest polluter in the world.

China overtook the United States for top place in 2006, but the US is still responsible for the most emissions historically, at one-quarter of all emissions.

 

Still, China’s pivot to renewables wasn’t just about addressing these rising emissions.

With polluted waterways and acrid city smog long ago becoming their own crises, China had to act. Part of that response, starting a decade ago, was a plan called Made in China 2025, which outlined how it would reshape its manufacturing capability to focus on high-tech products, including the ones needed to address climate change.

The authoritarian regime put the heft of the state behind clean technologies at a scale and pace difficult to imagine in most democracies.

It began to invest in all components for renewables, especially wind, solar, electric cars, and batteries that are used for both transport and energy storage. To do this, it used significant government-funded subsidies, said Ember’s Muyi Yang.

“We all understand that young sectors and technologies need some protection for them to grow. It’s like helping a baby to learn how to walk; initially, you need to support them.

“But I think the logic behind China’s policy support is always clear — this support is not meant to be pumped up indefinitely.”

When China rose to industrial dominance in the 1990s, it realised that it could maximise output by developing hubs where all parts of a supply chain for a product are built in the same region. The same approach was applied to renewables, meaning battery factories were established near car plants, as an example.

“It’s not about subsidies. It’s about sound planning, sustained commitment, and targeted support,” Yang said.

As the Made In China plan unfolded, more and more power was needed to fuel these energy-hungry factories and the lifestyles of the burgeoning middle class. To keep up, China built new coal-fired power stations, even as it was installing more wind and solar.

This “dissonance” between China’s booming renewables and coal has meant China is painted both as a climate hero and a villain.

It’s also meant that emissions kept rising.

[However,] a decade after the Made in China plan began, the country’s clean energy transformation is staggering.

“It’s a really interesting policy because it’s a 10-year plan to become a world-leading clean tech manufacturer, which they’ve outright achieved,” said Caroline Wang, the China engagement lead at the think tank Climate Energy Finance. “They’ve made themselves indispensable in the new kind of global economy.”

China is home to half of the world’s solar, half of the world’s wind power and half of the world’s electric cars.

“In the month of April alone, 45.2GW of solar was added, more than Australia’s total cumulative solar power capacity,” Caroline Wang said.

“China’s renewable capacity has exponentially increased and that has also contributed to the drop in coal, in coal use and emissions. There is now a structural kind of decline of coal.”

That’s already having an impact on emissions:

Recent analysis from Carbon Brief found the country’s emissions dropped in the first quarter of 2025 by 1.6 per cent. China produces 30 per cent of the world’s emissions, making this a critical milestone for climate action.

With its unmatched economies of scale, this dramatic acceleration has also brought down the cost of electrification across the world and made China the world leader in clean technologies. Chinese-made electric cars are becoming more dominant on Australian [and Thai, and Malaysian, And Brazilian ....] roads — something that’s already happened for the solar panels and batteries installed across Australian homes.

“China has successfully helped the rest of the world lower the bar for them to embark on the transition. This makes it easier for many other countries to jump on board,” Ember’s Muyi Yang said.

“The transition has to be affordable, otherwise it will be extremely difficult for many developing countries.”

China’s clean energy exports in 2024 alone have already shaved 1 per cent off global emissions outside of China, according to Carbon Brief, and will continue to do so for the next 30 years.

Caroline Wang points out that this green era has also brought major economic benefits.

“It drove 10 per cent of their GDP last year — just the one industry, clean energy. It’s overtaken real estate, and that says a lot because real estate was the driving force of their economy until a few years ago. But now it’s been overtaken by clean energy,” she said.

China’s renewables expansion is also striking because it could not be more different to the direction of another world superpower, the United States, under the leadership of President Donald Trump.

Casting aside the climate damage it will wreak, the US is in a position to return to its “drill, baby, drill” roots because the country produces more than enough fossil fuels to cover its own needs.

That’s not the case for China. One of the key reasons it has pivoted to electrification is to get away from its dependence on imported fossil fuels. 

“I think there’s some deep strategic thinking … it’s not only about the environmental obligation or international commitment, and it can also not be fully explained by economic benefit in terms of jobs and investment,” Yang said.

“Energy is a basic input for economic activities. Energy security is critical because it’s critical for supporting a functioning economy.”

“China sees the old, the conventional fossil fuel growth model as not sustainable. And it is becoming increasingly unable to sustain long-term prosperity.”

When the world’s economies became hooked on fossil fuels, they became dependent on the countries that could supply them, and the price of fossil fuels increasingly dictated global markets.

“This dates back to issues in the 1970s with the [oil] crisis,” said Jorrit Gosens, a fellow at the Centre for Climate and Energy Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU.

“That’s really when people start to think about energy security, especially when we talk about China.

“China typically is described as very rich in coal, but very poor in natural gas and oil.”

Electrification is changing that, and China — the world’s biggest oil importer — is already weaning itself off with electric cars.

“If you go to Beijing today, you can honestly stand at intersections with four lanes going every way and it’ll be quiet as a mouse. The noisiest thing coming past will be a creaky bicycle,” Dr Gosens remarked.

Last year, crude oil imports to China fell for the first time in two decades, with the exception of the recent pandemic. China is now expected to hit peak oil in 2027, according to the International Energy Agency.

This is already having an impact on projections for global oil production, as China had driven two-thirds of the growth in oil demand in the decade to 2023.

The 20th century was dominated by countries rich in fossil fuels, and many of the world’s conflicts fought over access, power and exploitation of them.

Done right, electrification could change that too, as most countries will be producing their own electricity.

“Even if you have pretty poor-quality natural resources, you can still squeeze quite a bit of electricity out of a solar panel. It’s really changing the geopolitics,” the ANU’s Dr Gosens said.

“Renewable energy is the most secure form of energy that there is because you just eliminate the need for imports.

“But also the cost of it, right? It’s a stable cost. You lock it in as soon as you build it. You know what the price of your electricity is going to be. You get insulated from both those risks if you have more renewable energy.”

For Australia, one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas, there is plenty to take from this, with China’s furious electrification paving the way for the rest of the world to follow.

“Even if we have these climate wars here still … we can bicker about how quickly we should transition away from fossil fuels domestically [but] the rest of the world is ultimately going to decide how much they’ll be buying of our coal, gas and iron ore,” Dr Gosens said.

“I think that’s the biggest risk — that we fail to prepare for something and that these changes will be much quicker than we currently anticipate.”

For Climate Energy Finance’s Caroline Wang, it’s in Australia’s interest to be clear-eyed about what’s happening in China.

“I think a gap in Australia and other Western countries is knowledge and understanding. China is a complex country … it’s got good and bad. For the energy transition space, which is full of complexity, there’s a real need, for our strategic national interests, for Australia to understand what is happening in China.”

Finding hope in national self-interest and security might seem strange, but for Wang, China’s transformation makes her more optimistic about the climate crisis.

“This is the world’s largest emitter, the largest population. If they’ve managed to do it in quite a short time — a decade — it’s a kind of achievement that we haven’t seen any other country achieve. And so it’s very inspiring. Seeing that on the ground gave me hope for other countries, including Australia … there are lessons there to be learned.” 

Just stop burning fossil fuels!

 Honestly, it's quite simple. We have to stop burning fossil fuels to stop global temperatures rising.

Simple in concept, but not in execution.  We have to replace a couple of thousand coal power stations with wind, solar, and nuclear power.   And we have to transition our whole car and light truck fleet to EVs.  1.6 billion of them!   And find ways to power air travel with renewable fuels.  Electric planes aren't quite there yet.  Oh, and then there's cement and steel, where the manufacturing processes emit CO2, quite apart from the energy used.   But, essentially, if we can halve emissions, we will also halve the decade-by-decade rise in global temperatures from +-0.2 degrees to +-0.1 degrees.  Which will give us more time to reduce emissions from those harder sectors.

Together, land transport and electricity generation contribute roughly 50% of emissions, globally.  And the good news is that in these sectors, the clean energy alternatives are cheaper than fossil fuels.

For example, in Australia, BYD now sells an electric car (EV) which costs the same as a Toyota Corolla. Since EVs are 4 times as efficient as petrol cars (most of the fuel burnt in a conventional petrol engine is wasted as heat, and isn't used to drive the car forward) they are already much cheaper to run than petrol cars. Now, they're cheaper to buy as well. What's more, when the regulations are promulgated (why so slow, Federal Government?) you will be able to run your house on the electricity in your car. The BYD will have roughly 45 kWh of stored electricity in its battery. Average daily household use in Australia is 15 kWh. So you'll be able to charge your EV when power is cheap (midday, and again after 10 pm) and use it when power is expensive (4 pm to 9 pm). So for the same price as a petrol car, you'll get a giant household battery, cheaper car fuel bills, and much-reduced electricity bills.

This has been made possible by the collapse in battery costs. And that deep, and continuing, plunge has been parallelled by the fall in solar panel costs. While high latitudes will never be able to run on solar alone, in low and mid-latitudes, such as Australia, we will be able to run our grid on 100% solar electricity, combining it with 6 or 8 hours of storage. And EVs will be part of that revolution, as every household and every business gets them.

All these trends are being driven by market forces. Extremely competitive Chinese manufacturers are driving down prices. BYD spends as much on research as its total profit. CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer, has introduced a sodium-ion battery. Sodium is a lot cheaper than lithium, and is also much safer. The same vigorous competition is driving down solar panel costs.

That's not to say we're out of the woods. There are powerful regressive forces which want to delay the transition, and useful idiots yelling loudly about how unfair it all is. Bring back steam trains!

Plus there are methane emissions from cattle and sheep, and CO2 from cement and steel. Methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas, over a 10 year horizon (after which it decays into CO2) There's air transport, and sea transport, and home heating (bring on heat pumps!).

However, we must move faster.  The seas are dying, and half the tree of life is going extinct.  We should attempt to halve emissions by 2035, and halve them again by 2045.  With costs of solar and batteries plunging, that's achievable.

The US is far behind in clean-energy technology

 From a BlueSky post by David Roberts

Most Americans really have no clue how far the US is being left behind.

These charts don't even show how China now dominates in EVs, high-speed rail, and urban mass transit.

And the Trump and the Republican Party want to reverse any progress the US has made!

Earth is trapping twice as much heat

Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast – and the rate has doubled in 20 years

Ice and reflective clouds reflect heat back to space. As the Earth heats up, most trapped heat goes into the oceans but some melts ice and heats the land and air. Pictured: Icebergs from the Jacobshavn glacier in Greenland, the largest outside Antarctica. Ashley Cooper/Getty

From The Conversation

How do you measure climate change? One way is by recording temperatures in different places over a long period of time. While this works well, natural variation can make it harder to see longer-term trends.

But another approach can give us a very clear sense of what’s going on: track how much heat enters Earth’s atmosphere and how much heat leaves. This is Earth’s energy budget, and it’s now well and truly out of balance.

Our recent research found this imbalance has more than doubled over the last 20 years. Other researchers have come to the same conclusions. This imbalance is now substantially more than climate models have suggested.

In the mid-2000s, the energy imbalance was about 0.6 watts per square metre (W/m2) on average. In recent years, the average was about 1.3 W/m2. This means the rate at which energy is accumulating near the planet’s surface has doubled.

These findings suggest climate change might well accelerate in the coming years. Worse still, this worrying imbalance is emerging even as funding uncertainty in the United States threatens our ability to track the flows of heat.

Earth’s energy budget functions a bit like your bank account, where money comes in and money goes out. If you reduce your spending, you’ll build up cash in your account. Here, energy is the currency.

Life on Earth depends on a balance between heat coming in from the Sun and heat leaving. This balance is tipping to one side.

Solar energy hits Earth and warms it. The atmosphere’s heat-trapping greenhouse gases keep some of this energy.

But the burning of coal, oil and gas has now added more than two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These trap more and more heat, preventing it from leaving.

Some of this extra heat is warming the land or melting sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. But this is a tiny fraction. Fully 90% has gone into the oceans due to their huge heat capacity.

Earth naturally sheds heat in several ways. One way is by reflecting incoming heat off of clouds, snow and ice and back out to space. Infrared radiation is also emitted back to space.

From the beginning of human civilisation up until just a century ago, the average surface temperature was about 14°C. The accumulating energy imbalance has now pushed average temperatures 1.3-1.5°C higher.

Scientists keep track of the energy budget in two ways.

First, we can directly measure the heat coming from the Sun and going back out to space, using the sensitive radiometers on monitoring satellites. This dataset and its predecessors date back to the late 1980s.

Second, we can accurately track the build-up of heat in the oceans and atmosphere by taking temperature readings. Thousands of robotic floats have monitored temperatures in the world’s oceans since the 1990s.

Both methods show the energy imbalance has grown rapidly.

The doubling of the energy imbalance has come as a shock, because the sophisticated climate models we use largely didn’t predict such a large and rapid change.

Typically, the models forecast less than half of the change we’re seeing in the real world.

We don’t yet have a full explanation. But new research suggests changes in clouds is a big factor.

Clouds have a cooling effect overall. But the area covered by highly reflective white clouds has shrunk, while the area of jumbled, less reflective clouds has grown.

It isn’t clear why the clouds are changing. One possible factor could be the consequences of successful efforts to reduce sulfur in shipping fuel from 2020, as burning the dirtier fuel may have had a brightening effect on clouds. However, the accelerating energy budget imbalance began before this change.

Natural fluctuations in the climate system such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation might also be playing a role. Finally – and most worryingly – the cloud changes might be part of a trend caused by global warming itself, that is, a positive feedback on climate change.

These findings suggest recent extremely hot years are not one-offs but may reflect a strengthening of warming over the coming decade or longer.

This will mean a higher chance of more intense climate impacts from searing heatwaves, droughts and extreme rains on land, and more intense and long lasting marine heatwaves.

This imbalance may lead to worse longer-term consequences. New research shows the only climate models coming close to simulating real world measurements are those with a higher “climate sensitivity”. That means these models predict more severe warming beyond the next few decades in scenarios where emissions are not rapidly reduced.

One could despair.  Yet we're far from helpless.  

We can get to 95% renewables in our grid with solar plus storage plus wind, without compromising the reliability of our grids, and we can do this between latitudes of at least 55 degrees north or south of the equator.   Every country should be moving as rapidly as possible to this goal, and when I say as rapidly as possible, I don't mean that we should get there by 2040 but by 2030.   +-30% of emissions come from electricity generation. 

We can run almost all our land transport using battery-electric vehicles.  (+-20% of emissions)  The problem here is that even when we get to 100% EV sales, it will still take a decade or more for the existing stock of vehicles to be completely switched to EVs.  Governments need to tweak tax policy to accelerate EV sales as well as buybacks of old petrol and diesel cars.

If we also start using heat pumps instead of gas/oil heaters, we could cut emissions by a total of 60% over the next ten years.  It's doable.  If only our politician and CEOs stopped lying to us, and took action instead of greenwashing.

Solar power doesn't sleep any more

 From Electrek

A new report from global energy think tank Ember says batteries have officially hit the price point that lets solar power deliver affordable electricity almost every hour of the year in the sunniest parts of the world.

The study looked at hourly solar data from 12 cities and found that in sun-soaked places like Las Vegas, you could pair 6 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels with 17 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries and get a steady 1 GW of power nearly 24/7. [At 1 GW per hour, the battery has 17 hours of storage.  This seems a lot!] The cost? Just $104 per megawatt-hour (MWh) based on average global prices for solar and batteries in 2024. That’s a 22% drop in a year and cheaper than new coal ($118/MWh) and nuclear ($182/MWh) in many regions.

Ember calls it “24/365 solar generation,” and it’s not just a theoretical model. Cities like Muscat, Oman, and Las Vegas can hit that steady power mark for up to 99% of the hours in a year. Hyderabad, Madrid, and Buenos Aires can reach 80–95% of the way there using that same solar-plus-storage setup with some cloud cover. And even cloudier cities like Birmingham in the UK can cover about 62% of hours annually.[Manchester is famouly cloudy and wet--latitude 53 degrees north. Berlin is also 53 degrees north.  New York is only 40 degrees N.  If you also have wind in your grid, you should be able to go to 100% renewables up to latitude 53.]

“This is a turning point in the clean energy transition,” said Kostantsa Rangelova, global electricity analyst at Ember. “Around-the-clock solar is no longer a distant dream; it’s an economic reality of the world. It unlocks game-changing opportunities for energy-hungry industries like data centres and manufacturing.”

This is an enormous opportunity for sunny regions in Africa and Latin America. Manufacturers and data centers could also tap into solar-plus-storage and skip long waits (and big bills) for new grid connections.

It’s not a silver bullet for grid-wide reliability, but it lets solar carry much more of the load, especially where sunshine is abundant. Batteries also help avoid costly grid expansions by allowing up to five times more solar to plug into existing connections [provided they are co-located with the solar farm].

In 2024 alone, global battery prices dropped 40%, which helped drive down solar-plus-storage costs by 22%. Record-low tenders from countries like Saudi Arabia point to even cheaper options coming soon.

Real-world projects are already online: The UAE built the world’s first gigawatt-scale 24-hour solar facility. Arizona is already home to solar-powered data centers. And as battery tech keeps improving, round-the-clock solar could become the backbone of clean energy systems in the world’s sunniest places [and even in their less sunny places].

 

China's solar panel manufacturing

This chart shows the level of Chinese solar panel manufacturing in 10,000 kW.  I have interpolated some gaps, particularly with respect to the usual Chinese practice of not publishing data for January and February separately, or at all.  I have seasonally and extreme-adjusted the time series.  These would be solar panels for both local use and exports.

It is plotted on a log scale because of its rapid growth.  It is up 17-fold since 2014, an annual average growth rate of 33% per annum since 2014.  Recently, the growth in output has been accelerating again, which is consistent with the very rapid growth in domestic installations.

Despite all the talk, developed countries didn't really believe in solar, and didn't support it enough.  (Ironically, Australia once led the world in solar, but the government decided to withdraw developmental subsidies, and the Chinese graduate student who'd helped develop solar in this country, returned to China to start theirs.)  

China decided to support the new technologies needed to fight climate change for three reasons.  

First, its coal-led growth had produced terrible, lethal pollution.   You could even see it from space.

Second, they knew climate change was real.  They had no rancid Right, to try and stop the revolution.  And no oil and coal companies to seduce politicians with bribes and poison the public debate with lies.

Third, it saw that these new technologies (wind, solar, lithium-ion batteries, and EVs) were going to be vastly important, and even though they were starting off small, they would grow fast, and would enable China to get rich.  They saw the future and they grabbed it.  

The West kept on believing that growth would be linear, not exponential.  (Many forecasts and projections continue to make this mistake.)   China supported these industries in early years with subsidies and directives.   This forced them down a rapid learning curve.  Cut-throat domestic competition forces the companies in these sectors to past the cost declines on to their customers, which in turn expands the markets.   That's called industrial policy.   It uses the learning curve to carve out new markets.  

End result:  China dominates, and these industries outside China are +-5 years behind, except perhaps for wind.   Chinese EVs, batteries, and solar panels are cheaper than the rest of the world, and only protectionism keeps other domestic markets safe.  

Have developed countries learned their lesson?  You have to wonder.  The US certainly hasn't.  I suspect that this is what Trump is dimly grasping at with his Trump tariffs.  But the Chinese have also made a point of training and educating their work force, and companies spend more than their profits on research to improve the technologies.  BYD is an excellent example.  And they also don't chop and change policies every five minutes.  

Will this kind of industrial policy work in other sectors in China?  Chinese technology firm, DeepSeek, seems to following the same government-driven development path, but for AI.   There was a time when I would have said, but would you trust a Chinese AI?  But would you trust an AI from the USA these days?  And yet, if you're Pakistan or Thailand or Indonesia, do you even care?

If you're a small or a poor economy--in other words, anyone outside the Big 8--it makes sense to buy these products from China.   They're cheap, and will raise your GDP and living standards, while cutting your emissions and your air pollution.  If you're one of the Big 8 economies, you need to spend heavily on promoting production of these technologies to catch up.  Or you might as well give up.  

Meanwhile, the US (the world's largest economy!), has stupidly decided to deal death blows to its own EV, battery and solar industries.  

There are lots of lessons here, but I doubt the West, still in thrall to neo-liberalism, still wedded to the belief that the market always knows best, will learn them.

Is there any hope at all?

There are some extraordinary things happening in the renewables space.

1. Solar power is up a lot (it varies by country) almost everywhere.  The cost of solar continues to decline, and because the cost of storage is plunging, "firming" solar electricity is becoming easier and cheaper.

2. CATL has introduced improved sodium-ion batteries. Sodium is roughly 1/5th as costly as lithium, so sodium-ion batteries will be much cheaper than lithium-ion. They also have a much longer life, theoretically allowing cars to travel 3 million miles before the batteries wear out. These new batteries will have 10,000 cycles, which will mean that even if they are charged and discharged 100% every day, they will still last 27 years.  Fantastic for stationary (grid) storage.  

3. EVs continue to make up an ever larger proportion of total car sales. In China, 1/3rd of the world's car market, they are +-50%, heading straight towards 100%. EVs (from China) now have the same sticker price as petrol cars. For example, here in Oz, the cheapest BYD Dolphin costs the same as the cheapest petrol Toyota Corolla. As battery prices plunge, EVs are only going to become ever more attractive.


Emissions from land transport and electricity generation are just under 50% of total global emissions. It seems plausible that these will have nearly ended by 2040, putting us halfway down the road to zero emissions. We need to do more (stop eating red meat, replace gas/oil heating with heat pumps/electrical heating, fix cement, steel and air travel, stop land clearing) to bend that curve towards a better outcome, but for the first time in years, I feel optimistic that we at last have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.  

What can you do to help?  You can cut your personal emissions, by as much as 20-30%, by becoming vegetarian, or at least, stopping eating beef and mutton, and not using milk.   If mankind did that, we would cut emissions by +-70%, adding together the decline in emissions from agriculture and transport and electricity generation.  The more we cut emissions, the sooner temperatures will stop rising.

It has been possible to argue that anything we do is pointless, because China's emissions have just kept on rising.  But this year, or next, China's emissions, as the country installs more and more solar, and EV sales continue to explode, will peak and start falling, and that particular excuse for inaction will disappear.

Let's do this.  

BYD leads unstoppable charge

BYD's plug-in hybrid, The Shark

 

From The Driven 

In 2024, China registered 31.436 million new automobiles, a rise of 4.5 per cent over the previous year, with the growth of NEVs (new energy vehicles) jumping an astonishing 35.5 per cent.

In the passenger vehicle market, China achieved an annual penetration rate of NEVs of 47.6% throughout 2024, with the percentage of new sales exceeding 50% for five consecutive months in the second half of the year.

That trend has continued into 2025, with China’s February NEV sales reaching 892,000, up 87 per cent from February 2024. BEV and PHEV sales were up 85% and 90% year on year respectively, far outpacing the overall demand growth (including ICE vehicles) of 34 per cent.

As the country’s biggest car maker BYD says, the facts demonstrate the unstoppable trend of electrification and accelerated replacement of ICE vehicles with NEVs.

As the world’s largest NEV producer, BYD is leading the charge both domestically and internationally on transforming the possibilities of electrified mobility and household electrification. Its rival, Tesla, has effectively left the race when it comes to sales growth.

The BYD profit report released overnight reveals that BYD generated RMB 777.1 billion ($US107 billion) in revenues in 2024, up 29.02% yoy, driven by a 40% yoy growth in NEV sales.

This translated to a 34% yoy growth of net profit to RMB 40.3bn ($US5.55bn) over the year for BYD, even as it invested RMB 54.2bn ($US7.48 billion) into R&D in 2024, taking its total investment into R&D to RMB 180bn ($US24.83 billion), most of it into its world-leading technology in batteries, electronics and EVs.

The company has 20,000 R&D engineers, and submits an average of 45 patent applications and 20 patent licenses every day. One of the latest is the ‘Super e-Platform’, enabling 1,000 kW charging power. Stepping into the era of “charging as fast as refuelling” with the ability to charge 400km in just 5 minutes.

The impact of that R&D is there to see. Battery prices have fallen 82% in the last 10 years alone. In the same time, battery densities have risen 5-fold.

In 2024, lithium-ion battery prices fell a further 20% to a record low of US$115/kWh as manufacturing overcapacity continues to surge.

In 2024, 3,100 GWh of fully commissioned battery-cell manufacturing capacity was online, more than 2.5x that of annual demand. This has driven massive demand growth for EVs and stationary energy storage (BESS) systems globally, with China continuing to dominate.

BYD is already showing incredible growth in 2025, with sales up 93% in the first two months of the year to 623,300 vehicles.

While Tesla’s profitability contracted over 2024, and its share price continues to dive as the US regresses on climate, clean energy and trade, BYD’s share price is up more than 51% in 2025 on the Hong Kong Exchange.

China was already the winner. Now it is clear, the runner-up has left the race. Incredible to see the EV revolution and China’s leadership in real time.

I've been saying for nearly a decade that the growth of EVs to market dominance was inevitable.  You just had to extend the lines plotted on log scale to see what was likely.

What I got wrong was that I assumed that Tesla would remain the market leader.  But Musk became obsessed with right-wing culture wars, and took his eye off the ball.  Anybody who has ever managed a business will know that that is fatal.   Market leadership has now switched to BYD, and more broadly, China.  The US had the lead; and together Musk and the Republicans have thrown it away.  Even assuming a changed administration in 2028, the US auto industry's lag behind China will have expanded to 5 years.   With the speed with which the market is shifting, that might as well be a lifetime.  Things are moving so fast in China that competitors will be unable to respond.

BYD is also driving down battery prices for grid storage.  And this will accelerate the replacement of coal and gas by solar with storage.   Learning curves with a vengeance, fuelled by billions of dollars of Chinese research.  Under these circumstances, no rational investor will put money into coal, oil or gas.  They're done.  Over.  Antediluvian.  As outdated as the Lockheed Constellation, or the Vickers Viscount, technological marvels of their time.   

So, whatever Trump or the Republicans or Big Oil think or do, electricity generation and road transport will go fully electric.  And as battery energy density rises, so will rail transport, shipping, and (eventually) air transport.  50% of global emissions will be eliminated.

[BYD's sales include plug-in hybrids.  These will surely be replaced with fully electric vehicles as cost falls and energy density increases.  At some point the cost of a second engine will outweigh the cost of bigger batteries, while at the same time, the rapid deployment of fast chargers will remove range anxiety.]

 

Unlocking cheaper energy

The EU’s Green Deal aims to ensure that the European Union achieves climate neutrality by 2050, through a comprehensive transition to renewable energies. Image by Rawpixel (CC0)

From East Anglia Bylines

 

National targets for solar and wind power will see reliance on natural gas massively decline, reducing electricity price volatility across Europe, with major beneficiaries including the UK and Ireland, the Nordics, and the Netherlands.

Hitting the current national 2030 quotas for solar and wind energy could reduce the volatility of electricity markets by an average of 20% across 29 European countries, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge.

The intensity of spikes in power prices are predicted to fall in every country by the end of the decade if commitments to green energy are met, as natural gas dependency is cut.

The UK and Ireland would be the biggest beneficiaries, with 44% and 43% reductions in the severity of electricity price spikes by 2030, compared with last year. Germany could experience a 31% decline in electricity price volatility, with the Netherlands and Belgium seeing price spikes ease by 38% and 33% respectively.

The simulations conducted for the new study show that scaling up renewable energy minimises the market impact of fluctuations in natural gas price – increasing stability even when considering the reliance of renewable technologies on weather.

Some EU leaders and energy ministers have called for renewables targets on grounds of energy security as well as decarbonisation, particularly since Putin’s war on Ukraine stemmed the flow of Russian gas.

The study, published in the journal Nature Energy, calculates in detail how such aims would affect the volatility of wholesale electricity prices in energy markets across Europe.

“The volatility of energy prices is a major cause of damage to national economies,” said Laura Diaz Anadon, the University of Cambridge’s Professor of Climate Change Policy.

“Consumers are still reeling from sharp increases in electricity prices brought about by natural gas shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Anadon. “We show that hitting renewables targets reduce the likelihood of such price spikes in the future.”

Daniel Navia, a researcher with the University’s Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG), said: “Meeting renewable energy targets is not only good for carbon neutrality, but we can see it is a boost to economic resilience”

“We had probably underestimated how costly energy price shocks are to our societies, and the last crisis has been a stark reminder.”

The Cambridge researchers used the University’s high performance computing facilities to model a wide range of factors – from fluctuations in weather patterns and energy demands to fuel capacity – to map the current and future grids of all 27 EU nations plus the UK and Switzerland.

They assessed electricity markets in 2030 based on the commitments to renewables as stated in each nation’s national energy and climate plan.

“The UK in particular is projected to see major benefits to its energy market stability from renewables,” said Anadon.

“The UK has struggled with its exposure to gas prices due to a lack of energy storage and limited connections to the European grid. This has led to more hours where electricity prices are set by natural gas.”

The research also suggests that wholesale prices of electricity could fall by over a quarter on average across all countries in the study by decade’s end if they stick to current national renewables targets.

Again, populations in the UK and Ireland stand to gain significantly, with electricity prices predicted to fall by around 45% by 2030, compared with the current situation.

Several of the Nordic nations could see over 60% reductions in electricity costs by 2030, while in Germany the price is predicted to fall by 34%, with Belgium seeing a similar drop of 31%. The study suggests the Netherlands could see the price of electricity fall by 41%.

Anti-renewables critics (mostly on the Right) maintain that renewables bring higher prices.  But this is because gas is used to balance the grid, and gas prices outside the USA have gone up 5-fold since early 2020.  New wind and solar and batteries have continued to fall in price over the last 5 years, solar and batteries especially.  Electricity from peaking plants is always expensive because they only run for a short time, yet their expenses must still be covered, meaning that the cost per MWh is several times the cost of other sources of power.

This ratio of gas peaking plants to wind and solar is obviously made even worse if the gas price has quintupled.  As battery costs decline, more and more of the need for peaking plants will be assumed by "big batteries" (and also by the batteries in our EVs.)  Costs will inevitably fall, not rise.

Battery cell costs to halve again

 Hat tip to Anish Kumar Sinha

Battery pack costs are higher than cell costs, but even so, LFP (Lithium-Iron-Phosphate) battery pack costs could drop from the current $94/kWh to  $60/kWh or below.  And that's before sodium-ion batteries go into mass production.

It's really simple: the market share of EVs is heading inexorably to 100%.  

Even in countries with high import tariffs on imported EVs (US/Europe), the cost of Chinese EVs will fall so fast that domestic EV prices will have to respond, leading to rising EV sales.  Not to mention Chinese EV companies opening new EV plants in S.E. Asia, Latin America and Africa.  

With electricity generation, ultra-cheap batteries will allow 24/7 solar power in sun-belt regions of the globe (35 degrees S to 35 degrees N), and mixed solar/wind in higher latitudes.  Beyond latitude 60 degrees, some form of long-term storage will be needed, prob'ly green hydrogen/green methane/green methanol.  But all this can be done using renewables, not fossil fuels. 

This revolution cannot be stopped by big oil.  Demand for coal and oil will fall progressively.  And global emissions will fall too.

Biggest drop in battery-pack prices in 7 years

 

From BNEF

Battery prices saw their biggest annual drop since 2017. Lithium-ion battery pack prices dropped 20% from 2023 to a record low of $115 per kilowatt-hour, according to analysis by research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF). Factors driving the decline include cell manufacturing overcapacity, economies of scale, low metal and component prices, adoption of lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, and a slowdown in electric vehicle sales growth. This figure represents a global average, with prices varying widely across different countries and application areas.

Over the past two years, battery manufacturers have aggressively expanded production capacity in anticipation of surging demand for batteries in the EV and stationary storage sectors. Currently, overcapacity is rife, with 3.1 terawatt-hours of fully commissioned battery-cell manufacturing capacity globally. That is more than 2.5 times annual demand for lithium-ion batteries in 2024, according to BNEF. While demand across all sectors saw year-on-year growth, the EV market – the biggest demand driver for batteries – grew more slowly than in recent years. Meanwhile, stationary storage markets have taken off, with strong competition across cell and system providers, especially in China.

Evelina Stoikou, the head of BNEF’s battery technology team and lead author of the report, said: “The price drop for battery cells this year was greater compared with that seen in battery metal prices, indicating that margins for battery manufacturers are being squeezed. Smaller manufacturers face particular pressure to lower cell prices to fight for market share.”

 

The figures represent an average across multiple battery end-uses, including different types of electric vehicles, buses and stationary storage projects. Prices for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) came in at $97/kWh, crossing below the $100/kWh threshold for the first time. While EVs have reached price parity in China, they are still more expensive than comparable combustion cars in many markets. BNEF expects more segments to reach price parity in the years ahead as lower-cost batteries become more widely available outside of China.

On a regional basis, average battery pack prices were lowest in China, at $94/kWh. Packs in the US and Europe were 31% and 48% higher, reflecting the relative immaturity of these markets, as well as higher production costs and lower volumes. The price differences for North America and Europe compared to China were higher than in other years, implying the drop in prices was more accentuated in China. Companies in China faced fierce competition this year. These conditions resulted in falling battery prices and lower battery margins, forcing many battery manufacturers to enter new markets, including energy storage, while also eyeing overseas markets willing to pay more for batteries.

The industry has also benefitted from low raw material prices. These could rise in the next few years, as geopolitical tensions, tariffs on battery metals and low prices stall new mining and refining projects.

Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at BNEF, said: “One thing we’re watching is how new tariffs on finished battery products may lead to distortionary pricing dynamics and slow end-product demand. Regardless, higher adoption of LFP chemistries, continued market competition, improvements in technology, material processing and manufacturing will exert downward pressure on battery prices.”

BNEF expects pack prices to decrease by $3/kWh in 2025, based on its near-term outlook. Looking ahead, continued investment in R&D, manufacturing process improvements, and capacity expansion across the supply chain will help improve battery technology and further reduce prices over the next decade. In addition, next-generation technologies, such as silicon and lithium metal anodes, solid-state electrolytes, new cathode material, and new cell-manufacturing processes will play an important role in enabling further price reductions in the coming decade.

We have to draw a distinction between battery cell prices and battery pack prices.   The cells are only part of a battery pack.  Battery pack prices are very different in different economies.  They are by far the cheapest in China, at $94/kWh, compared with the US at $123/kWh, and Europe at $139.   Without tariffs, battery cell prices would converge on the lowest price, which is currently around $53/kWh in China.  And there are sodium-ion batteries which will soon have a cell cost below $35/kWh, and a pack cost (my estimate) of $60/kWh.  

BNEF forecasts a fall of just $3 in pack prices during 2025.  I've used that in my chart below (which goes further back than 2013, as I have been collecting the data for longer), but I suspect that's far too conservative.   With huge oversupply of battery production in China, price pressure is going to remain.  And the pressure on China's battery manufacturers and EV makers to survive will drive exports, if not to Europe and the USA, at least to the rest of the world. 

This affects both stationary storage (for the grid) and for EVs.  Legacy carmakers refused to take EVs seriously until too late, which is why their battery pack prices are so high.  They are way behind the curve.  China has the capacity to build 40 million cars a year, and is only building 3/4 of that number.  China's car, and battery, exports are going to explode.  Whatever Trump does.

Batteries + solar = grid stability

Note exponential curve.
Also, excludes household storage

From This is Not Cool (formerly ClimateCrocks)

Denton Record Chronicle (Texas):

With temperatures climbing over 100 [F; 38 C]  in much of the state, the Texas electric grid set an all-time record for energy demand Tuesday.

Despite the heat wave, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has yet to ask people to conserve electricity. That’s a big change from 2023, when extreme weather and fear of low power reserves prompted ERCOT to issue 11 requests for conservation through the year.

Grid operators and energy experts are pointing to the rapid growth of solar power and grid-scale batteries as key reasons why residents haven’t been asked to conserve this month.

“We’ve seen significant additions of energy storage resources, solar resources and wind resources, with a few additions also on the gas side,” Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said at an ERCOT board meeting Tuesday. “All of that has helped to contribute to less scarcity conditions.”

In fact, the growth of some of those energy sources has been downright record-breaking.

As the sun and heat bore down, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday brought the top three days for solar power production in the history of the state grid, according to the website Gridstatus.io, which tracks the performance of regional electricity transmission systems.

On Sunday, the top day for solar production, Texas solar farms produced 20,832 megawatts of power. It’s worth noting that this number does not include energy produced by rooftop panels on homes and businesses.

According to ERCOT, 1 megawatt is enough to power about 250 homes at times of peak demand.

Texas also set new records Monday and Tuesday for the amount of power provided by big utility-scale batteries, something that could have made the difference between a normal day and a grid emergency.

“The previous storage record was shattered by 25%,” Doug Lewin, author of The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter, tweeted. We “almost certainly would have been rolling outages without it.”

The reason for the rapid uptick in solar and battery power on the state grid is pretty simple.

Energy demand has grown rapidly in Texas over the last few years, and frequent moments of energy scarcity have presented a business opportunity for solar farms and battery storage facilities that can quickly set up shop to fill the need.

Hot, sunny days — the very conditions that bring higher energy use — are also the conditions that produce solar power. That solar energy also can be used to fill large batteries that discharge power back to the grid when the sun sets over solar farms, but air conditioners are still running full blast.

San Jose Mercury News:

 

Four years ago this week, California’s power grid was so strained by a heat wave that rolling blackouts hit hundreds of thousands of residents over two days. It nearly happened again two years ago, when state officials issued 11 “flex alerts” asking businesses and homeowners to voluntarily reduce electricity use to avoid power disruptions.

But this year when a record heat wave scorched the state over three weeks from mid-June to July — sending temperatures across the Bay Area and the Central Valley soaring over 110 degrees — there was plenty of power. No warnings. No shortages. No flex alerts.

A big part of the reason, experts say, is a boom in the construction of giant battery projects.

California’s high-tech battery centers built with thousands of lithium-ion batteries similar to the batteries in cell phones and electric cars are solving the main shortcoming of the push for more renewable energy: the fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night.

Battery storage has increased sevenfold in the past five years in California, from 1,474 megawatts in 2020 to 10,383 megawatts now. A megawatt is enough electricity to run 750 homes.

Before, when the sun went down every summer evening, giant solar farms stopped producing electricity, sometimes leading to power shortages statewide in the early evening. Now, the growing number of battery storage plants across the state can store that solar power during the day when it is plentiful. The battery storage plants then release it back to the power grid in the evening as the sun goes down but hot weather keeps electricity demand high because millions of Californians are running air conditioners.

“Think of it like an energy bank account,” said Elliott Mainzer, president and CEO of California Independent System Operator, an agency in Folsom that manages the state’s power grid. “In the middle of the day, you are making big deposits. At the end of the day, we withdraw from that account.”

Battery powered flights from Washington DC to LA

From Just Have a Think 

Battery technology is developing at breath-taking speed all over the world, but China still leads the way. Now they've created batteries with such high energy density that they're using them to develop a commercial aircraft with a range of 2,000 miles - enough for most commuter flights in the US or Europe. So, has battery chemistry reached yet another previously impossible milestone?

 

As usual, a thoughtful and well-informed video.  The intense competition in batteries in China is driving innovation and cost cutting.

Renewables, batteries help California grid breeze through heatwave

 From This is Not Cool.

No rolling blackouts or grid emergencies as California continues on path to a carbon free grid. Several strategies, including upgrades to vulnerable parts of the grid at play here, but key enabler is more clean energy, especially solar, and above all, battery storage, now equivalent to 5 very large nuclear power plants.

In fact, California seems to have reached a level of storage that is creating some kind of a phase-change in the grid, yielding benefits that are surprising even expert observers. More and more days where renewables supply greater-than 100 percent of California’s power – enabling exports even under these challenging conditions.

 

World's largest sodium-ion battery

Source: ESS-News

From ESS-News

China’s state-owned power generation enterprise Datang Group said on June 30 that it had connected to the grid a 50 MW/100 MWh [this means it can produce 50MW of electricity for 2 hours, or, for example, 25MW for 4 hours] project in Qianjiang, Hubei Province, making it the world’s largest operating sodium-ion battery energy storage system.

The project represents the first phase of the Datang Hubei Sodium Ion New Energy Storage Power Station, which consists of 42 battery energy storage containers and 21 sets of boost converters. It uses 185 ampere-hour large-capacity sodium-ion batteries supplied by China’s HiNa Battery Technology and is equipped with a 110 kV transformer station.

Previously, the largest operational sodium-ion system was China Southern Power Grid’s Fulin 10 MWh BESS project, located in Nanning, southwestern China. The power station, which represents the first phase of a 100 MWh project, also features HiNa Battery’s cells.

According to Datang Group, one of China’s five large-scale power generation companies, the project team has overcome many difficulties to bring the Qianjiang project to fruition.

The company describes the project as the first large-scale and commercial application of large-capacity sodium-ion energy storage systems and sees a lot of advantages in this type of battery chemistry.

“Sodium-ion batteries have excellent safety and low-temperature operating performance. They can still guarantee 85% charge and discharge efficiency at minus 20 degrees Celsius, which is unmatched by other batteries. They can also guarantee 1,500 charge and discharge cycles at a high temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. Their puncture resistance and impact resistance are much better than that of ordinary batteries,” said Cui Yongle, project manager of Datang Hubei Sodium Ion Energy Storage.

According to Datang Group, the power station can be charged and discharged more than 300 times a year. A single charge can store up to 100,000 kWh of electricity and release electricity during the peak period of the power grid. It can meet the daily power needs of around 12,000 households and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 13,000 tons annually.

Because sodium is much more abundant than lithium, sodium-ion batteries are also significantly (30%) cheaper than lithium-ion batteries.  Their energy density is lower than lithium-ion, in other words, they're heavier for the same amount of storage, which is why they've not yet been used in EVs.  But BYD, Chery and YiWei (a JV with Volkswagen) are all introducing EVs with sodium-ion batteries.  They're using them in cheap EVs with low ranges to cut costs. Given the ferment and fierce competition in batteries and EVs in China, expect further sustained cost falls in Na-ion batteries.  Our electricity storage problem is being solved.  I predict costs will halve again over the next five years--or sooner.

Add this to the sustained decline in already cheap solar panels and the electricity generated from them, and the switch to solar in mid- and low latitudes will only accelerate.

Your EV's battery will last at least 200,000 miles

From Clean Technica

One of the bigger concerns many consumers have had about buying electric cars is that the big batteries that power the cars will need to be replaced after a few years, at very high cost. That may have been a legit concern initially, especially because without electric cars that had been around for years, no one could really know how long their batteries would last in real life. Also, some automakers did have issues with battery degradation — well, Nissan did because it didn’t include battery management systems.

However, Tesla pointed out at its recent shareholder meeting that there’s no such worry with its batteries. The company says that its batteries are designed to last longer than its cars. As evidence, Tesla showed a graph of Model 3 and Model Y battery degradation up through 200,000 miles (322,000 km) of driving.

If you assume 15,000 miles of driving a year (the US average), that’s over 13 years of driving and your battery still has more than 80% of its original capacity. If you assume 10,000 miles of driving a year (our family’s average), that’s 20 years of driving and your battery still has more than 80% of its original capacity. Actually, Tesla indicates that the batteries should retain a full 85% of their original capacity after 200,000 miles of driving.

Of course, this graph is from Tesla, but it should be a very similar story for other electric cars and their batteries these days. Much has gone into improving batteries, protecting them, and making sure they last a long time.

Naturally, there still can be some batteries that lose more than 80% of range in under 200,000 miles, but those would be odd, highly uncommon cases.

It’s also worth noting, especially for new EV owners, that your battery will take a degradation hit and lose a chunk of range early on. The first year or two of driving will probably see it knocked down by about 10%. It’s how batteries work.

I also find it interesting that there’s more variation and “jumpiness” in the degradation norms and estimate further along the graph. It’s not the greatest divergence in estimates, but it’s clearly visible that things get less steady and predictable.

The only other thing that jumps out to me while looking at this graph is that Tesla previously aimed to have its vehicles last 1 million miles. Naturally, 200,000 is just one-fifth of 1 million. I’m curious to see what Model 3 and Model Y battery degradation will be at 1 million miles, if we ever have vehicles that do last that long. However, I’m also not super confident that many Teslas will last 1 million miles. Even if you used 20,000 miles a year as the annual estimate, that would be 50 years of driving. If you used our average of 10,000 miles a year, that would be 100 years! So, yes, maybe it’s best to just drop that 1 million miles target or estimate and stick with a more reasonable vehicle lifespan. In that case, it seems that Tesla is right to point out that its batteries should outlast the cars their powering — and then can be recycled or reused for new purposes!