Babbage: How to avoid a battery shortage
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the coming decades, electric vehicles will dominate the roads and renewables will provide energy to homes. But for the green transition to be successful, unprecedented amounts of energy storage is needed. Batteries will be used everywhere—from powering electric vehicles, to providing electricity when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. The current generation of batteries are lacking in capacity and are too reliant on rare metals, though. Many analysts worry about material shortages. How can technology help?
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Paul Markillie, our innovation editor; Matthieu Favas, our finance correspondent; Anjani Trivedi, our global business correspondent.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In a world of seismic change, will your business shape the future or be shaped by it? |
| 0:07.0 | How will we capture the imagination of tomorrow's consumers? |
| 0:12.0 | Overcome operational constraints to focus on future growth |
| 0:17.0 | and unlock economic and social prosperity through environmental responsibility. |
| 0:22.8 | With EY's full spectrum of services across sectors, we're all in to shape the future with confidence. |
| 0:29.1 | Start your transformation journey at EY.com slash transformation. |
| 0:36.1 | This episode of Babbage is supported by IDA Island. With the highest share of STEM graduates per capita in the EU, IDA Island can help source the skills you need to internationalize and thrive. Visit IDAIreland.com to learn more. The Economist. |
| 0:59.6 | A quick announcement before we get started with today's episode. |
| 1:03.3 | Economist Podcast Plus, our new subscriber service, is here. |
| 1:07.1 | Whether you're one of the thousands of people who've signed up in the past weeks or you're a long-time |
| 1:11.2 | subscriber you'll need to link your podcast app to your economist subscription to listen to everything we |
| 1:17.5 | have on offer we'll have more details on how to set up your account later in the show if you're not |
| 1:24.2 | yet a subscriber don't panic you've got got until the end of October to get our |
| 1:28.5 | half-price offer. To sign up now, click the link in the show notes or search online for Economist |
| 1:34.5 | Podcasts. The world is going through one of the biggest transitions of energy in history. |
| 1:51.0 | Many countries want renewables or other clean energy to power everything. |
| 1:57.0 | If the transition goes well, the cities of the future should be greener, quieter and more electric. |
| 2:07.6 | Cleaning up power stations that burn fossil fuels, of course, is a big part of the transformation. |
| 2:13.6 | But as everyone knows, if you want to rely on solar, wind, wave or any other renewable source of energy to make more and more of the world's electricity, you'll need lots of new storage. |
| 2:31.3 | Now, there are lots of different types of storage, but today we want to focus on the one which is probably most important to you in everyday life. |
| 2:40.0 | Batteries. In the coming decades if the green energy transition is going to work we need more batteries that can store more energy with chemistries that are less reliant on rare metals. |
| 2:53.1 | And of course, all of this new technology will somehow need to become a lot cheaper than it is today. |
... |
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