The U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, joins Cheddar to discuss the state of clean energy and keeping battery manufacturing in America. Watch!
Dr. Shirley Meng and her team of material engineers are racing to create affordable and efficient batteries that can store solar and wind energy.
The cells they're building are so sensitive they must work in oxygen-void, humidity-controlled glove boxes through thick rubber sleeves. It requires the fine motor skills one expects of a surgeon.
They're betting on sodium-ion batteries.
Renewable energy can only be generated when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and it operates in a use-it-or-lose-it fashion that can't satisfy society's constant demand for electricity.
Fossil fuels -- and nuclear energy -- have to kick in to compensate, unless there's a way to stockpile renewable energy for later use.
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The answer to this dilemma could lie in Meng's West Loop lab, where a breakthrough this summer significantly increased the energy capacity and decreased the production cost of sodium-ion batteries.
"The world is depending on battery scientists to give us a less expensive renewable-based grid," said University of Chicago climate economist Michael Greenstone. "The world is counting on Shirley."
From a young age, Meng found magic in the way waves, sunshine and breezes can power cities as she listened to her father, a civil engineer, talk about building hydroelectric dams in 1980s China. She moved to the U.S. from Singapore in 2001 on a mission to better harness renewable energy. Chicago became home a decade later when she was tapped to be chief scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a professor at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
Batteries have recently caught the attention of lawmakers in Springfield, too.
Sen. Bill Cunningham plans to push forward a bill to significantly increase the battery capacity on Illinois' electric grid. He considers it a necessary complement to the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which set a 2045 goal to shutter fossil fuel plants and expand renewable energy but did not include significant provisions for energy storage.
"Without battery, I think many (coal and natural gas) plants will remain open," he said.
It's already starting to happen. The Elgin Energy Center, a natural gas-fired power plant, was supposed to shut down in June 2025, but it rescinded those plans in September shortly after northern Illinois' grid operator announced record-high electricity prices next year.
There isn't enough supply to meet demand. An influx of power-hungry data centers and the steady flow of industry back to Illinois are colliding with delays in getting renewable energy projects on the grid.
"Nobody anticipated the increased demand we were going to see from data centers. That is becoming a game changer," Cunningham said.
According to the watchdog North American Electric Reliability Corp., the state is already at an "elevated risk" of losing power during extreme weather events like heat waves and polar vortexes. Both are only expected to become more frequent and severe as climate change worsens.
"(The batteries) are going to act as if you just put a couple of new power plants on the market," said Mark Pruitt, the former director of the Illinois Power Agency, the independent government agency that would oversee the bill's execution.
While Cunningham's bill is technology agnostic, if passed soon, it will most likely rely on lithium-ion batteries: the same type that runs cellphones, laptops and electric cars.
Their price has dropped 99%, and performance has increased fivefold over the last three decades as China produces them at a tremendous scale.
China is largely considered to have won the race to perfect the lithium-ion battery. But Meng, a Singaporean American, isn't worried. The materials engineer spent the first decade of her career developing lithium-ion batteries, but it became clear to her that they wouldn't be the silver bullet for energy storage.
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All the lithium-ion batteries in the world collectively hold 1 terawatt of power, or 1 million megawatts. That's just enough electricity to power the U.S. at peak energy consumption for one hour. Meanwhile, Meng estimates reaching net-zero emissions will require 200 to 300 terawatts worth of batteries globally.
The United States' battery capacity is only slightly above 15,000 megawatts, with Illinois clocking in at 100 megawatts. The bill aims to increase the state's battery capacity to 8,500 megawatts, enough to charge 130 million laptops.
"It's a very deep hole," said Pruitt. A new analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates Illinois will need at least 3,000 megawatts of storage in the next five years and over 9,000 megawatts by 2035.
A major, insurmountable downfall of lithium-ion batteries is that they're made from scarce critical minerals: lithium, cobalt and nickel. Most of the world's lithium, for example, is concentrated in Australia and Chile, where it must be procured with invasive, water-intensive mining. The mining and transportation of the minerals -- largely to China -- produce significant emissions as well.
It took 30 years to scale lithium-ion batteries to 1 terawatt of capacity, so engineers and policymakers have to work fast if the world is going to reach the midcentury net-zero emission target set by the Paris Agreement. It already missed the agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"Can humanity build the next terawatt of capacity within two decades?" asked Meng. "And then the next one, can we do it within one decade? Is that possible?"
Her team believes sodium-ion batteries can scale to hold at least another terawatt of power.
Found in ocean water, sodium is a thousand times more abundant and environmentally friendly to procure, potentially alleviating supply chain concerns and production-related emissions tied to lithium-ion batteries.
Historically, however, sodium-ion batteries haven't been able to hold as much power as their lithium counterparts. But the batteries Meng's team has built have an energy density that rivals the lithium-ion batteries on the market.
Now, her team is working on making these sodium-ion batteries commercially viable. They aren't yet stable enough to operate outside the climate-controlled glove box.
The federal government awarded her team $62.5 million in September to tackle the challenge over the next five years. To date, the development and commercialization of sodium-ion batteries have been somewhat hindered by increasingly low prices for lithium-ion batteries coming out of China.
"Whenever lithium-ion batteries go to a lower price, the research effort on sodium always suffers," said Meng.
The economics of battery adoption has been on her mind a lot.
The economy ranked as the most important issue for voters in the recent presidential election, prompting the majority to vote for Donald Trump, who doubts the scientifically proven existence of climate change. Clean energy solutions are unlikely to take off unless they're good for people's pocketbooks.
"How do you have an unsubsidized industry that can make a profit and do good for the planet?" Meng asked.
The question motivated the materials engineer, who has spent her career working in labs, to come to the University of Chicago, which has one of the world's leading economics departments. Last month, under Greenstone's leadership, the university launched the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. Advancing energy storage technologies is one of the institute's three foundational pillars, alongside climate change mitigation measures like geoengineering.
In Illinois, utility-scale batteries will require subsidies to get off the ground. Eventually, however, they are anticipated to save consumers money. The question is how long consumers will wait to see the economic benefits.
If Illinois' proposed bill is passed, residents can expect a small fee on their bill for five years. Savings will kick in around year six, according to Pruitt, totaling a net reduction of $3 billion on utility bills over the first 20 years. That's an average cost savings of $4 to $7 per month per family.
Next year, without batteries and even though the Elgin plant is staying open, northern Illinois grid operators said residents will see their monthly bills rise by $7.50 to $10. The central and southern Illinois grid operator is expected to announce similar increases.
Time is of the essence, both to temper utility bills and keep Illinois' climate goals on track.
"The longer we put off deploying batteries, the bigger the problem gets," said Cunningham, who's committed to introducing the bill in the January legislative session. "It may cross over to the spring, but that would be a mistake."
The Pritzker administration, which confirmed it has reviewed and spoken to stakeholders about the bill, acknowledges that batteries will be crucial to Illinois' quest for net-zero emissions midcentury.
"Whatever happens legislatively in the next few weeks or months, it is almost certain that storage will have a significant role to play in the clean energy transition, in Illinois and elsewhere," the state's climate adviser, JC Kibbey, said.
"The world is depending on battery scientists to give us a less expensive renewable-based grid."
-- Michael Greenstone, University of Chicago climate economist
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