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Energy storage emerging: A perspective from the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research
Edited by Richard Eisenberg, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and approved April 22, 2020 (received for review October 28, 2019)
Abstract
Energy storage is an integral part of modern society. A contemporary example is the lithium (Li)-ion battery, which enabled the launch of the personal electronics revolution in 1991 and the first commercial electric vehicles in 2010. Most recently, Li-ion batteries have expanded into the electricity grid to firm variable renewable generation, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of transmission and distribution. Important applications continue to emerge including decarbonization of heavy-duty vehicles, rail, maritime shipping, and aviation and the growth of renewable electricity and storage on the grid. This perspective compares energy storage needs and priorities in 2010 with those now and those emerging over the next few decades. The diversity of demands for energy storage requires a diversity of purpose-built batteries designed to meet disparate applications. Advances in the frontier of battery research to achieve transformative performance spanning energy and power density, capacity, charge/discharge times, cost, lifetime, and safety are highlighted, along with strategic research refinements made by the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and the broader community to accommodate the changing storage needs and priorities. Innovative experimental tools with higher spatial and temporal resolution, in situ and operando characterization, first-principles simulation, high throughput computation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence work collectively to reveal the origins of the electrochemical phenomena that enable new means of energy storage. This knowledge allows a constructionist approach to materials, chemistries, and architectures, where each atom or molecule plays a prescribed role in realizing batteries with unique performance profiles suitable for emergent demands.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: brushett{at}mit.edu.
Author contributions: L.T., F.R.B., N.P.B., G.C., L.C., Y.-M.C., N.T.H., B.J.I., S.D.M., J.S.M., K.T.M., L.F.N., K.A.P., D.J.S., K.X., K.R.Z., V.S., and G.W.C. designed research; and L.T., F.R.B., and G.W.C. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This paper results from the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences, “Status and Challenges in Decarbonizing our Energy Landscape,” held October 10–12, 2018, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, CA. NAS colloquia began in 1991 and have been published in PNAS since 1995. From February 2001 through May 2019 colloquia were supported by a generous gift from The Dame Jillian and Dr. Arthur M. Sackler Foundation for the Arts, Sciences, & Humanities, in memory of Dame Sackler’s husband, Arthur M. Sackler. The complete program and video recordings of most presentations are available on the NAS website at http://www.nasonline.org/decarbonizing.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Published under the PNAS license.
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- The Energy Storage Landscape Since 2010
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- A Decade of Battery Development
- Electricity Grid: Redoxmers, Polymer Membranes, and Long-Duration Storage
- Transportation: Li-S, Li-O, and Multivalent Batteries
- Next-Generation Organic Electrolytes: The Electrolyte Genome
- Safety and High Energy Density: Solid-State Electrolytes and Alkali Metal Negative Electrodes
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