“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Low-Cost Batteries from Abundant Resources

Brit­ish start-up Fara­dion pro­duces so­dium-ion bat­ter­ies op­er­at­ing on sim­ilar prin­ciples to other re­chargeable bat­ter­ies. However, the unique cell chem­istry res­ults in high performance, enhanced safety, and reduced costs. Com­pared to more com­mon lith­ium-ion bat­ter­ies, the main in­gredi­ent in Fara­di­on’s bat­ter­ies, so­dium, is a read­ily avail­able and nat­ur­ally abund­ant re­source, of­fer­ing a sus­tain­able solu­tion for ma­ter­ial ac­quis­i­tion.

The re­duc­tion in cell costs for so­dium-ion com­pared with lith­ium-ion bat­ter­ies is primar­ily due to the re­l­at­ive abund­ance of and easy ac­cess to so­dium versus lith­ium. Ad­di­tion­ally, the high con­duct­iv­ity of the so­dium-ion bat­tery, and the ability to use aluminium instead of copper in the cell com­pon­ents, also of­fers en­vir­on­mental and cost ad­vant­ages. The first vehicle to be powered by so­dium-ion bat­ter­ies – an e-bike – was demon­strated in May 2015, us­ing Fara­di­on’s tech­no­logy. Fara­dion leads a con­sor­tium that re­ceived $1.9 mil­lion to sig­ni­fic­antly re­duce the cost of elec­tric vehicle bat­ter­ies via cheaper so­dium-ion tech­no­logy.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
The share of elec­tri­city gen­er­ated by re­new­ables is in­creas­ing in all in­dus­trial coun­tries, but en­ergy stor­age solu­tions are needed to bet­ter in­teg­rate re­new­ables into the grid. However, a fore­cast pre­dicts that 66% of the cost of stor­age sys­tems will come from the bat­tery. By re­du­cing bat­tery prices, Fara­di­on’s tech­no­logy could make solar stor­age more ac­cess­ible to a greater num­ber of house­holds and busi­nesses world­wide.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
So­dium is a read­ily avail­able and nat­ur­ally abund­ant re­source, of­fer­ing a sus­tain­able and safe solu­tion to en­ergy stor­age, which will help re­duce car­bon emis­sions.

SOCIAL
The so­dium-ion chem­istry makes it pos­sible to fully dis­charge the cells, en­abling them to be handled, trans­por­ted, and stored at zero volts with no risk of haz­ards like ex­plo­sions or re­lease of harm­ful gases.

ECONOMIC
Us­ing so­dium-ion tech­no­logy as an al­tern­at­ive bat­tery tech­no­logy of­fers a 30% re­duc­tion in cell costs com­pared to lith­ium-ion bat­ter­ies, based on a labor­at­ory test of Fara­di­on’s tech­no­logy.