Energy and battery technology is booming.

As U.S. automakers make bold longterm commitments to electrify their fleets, there may not be enough lithiumion batteries to go around in the shortterm. While China dominates the battery manufacturing supply chain, and Europe is working to catch up, the U.S. still lags far behind. As batteries become a matter of energy independence and national security, here’s what the U.S. can do to catch up.

Analysts estimate that the size of the EV battery industry will grow to around $70 billion by 2025, and there’s a number of innovative battery startups trying to grab a piece of the pie. One of these companies, Cuberg, is making lithiummetal batteries, which it says will be twice as energy dense as standard lithiumion, and could therefore help electric vehicles become cheaper and more efficient. Because Cuberg’s tech is largely compatible with existing lithiumion manufacturing processes, it has the potential to scale quickly. And if it does, we could see lithium metal batteries powering small planes and electric vehicles within the decade.

Elon Musk announced that Tesla was getting into the energy business in 2015, and now it’s betting that it will become increasingly important for the company. In 2020, it surpassed 3 gigawatt hours of energy storage deployments in a single year, largely due to the popularity of Megapack, its utilityscale battery product. CNBC visited PG&E’s Tesla Megapack site in Moss Landing, California and learned why energy storage systems like Tesla’s could be everywhere in a future of renewable power.

Energy is also coming from unlikely sources. Bioo is generating electricity from the organic matter in soil and creating biological batteries to power agricultural sensors, a growing $1.36 billion global market. Eventually, Bioo envisions a future where biology could help to power our largest cities.

SEGMENTS:
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20:37 How Soil Could Be An Untapped Source Of Electricity
30:28 Why This Battery Breakthrough Could Make EVs Cheaper
42:11 Why the U.S. EV Industry is facing a battery shortage

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The Big Business Of Energy For The EV Industry