How Scientists, Car Companies, and the Military Are Creating the Smartest Energy Solution on the Market

Back in February, Tesla Motors sent a shock wave through the energy technology world when it announced plans to build the globe's biggest battery factory.

The sheer scale of the proposed "gigafactory" is enormous."  [Tesla's] goal by 2020 is to be producing 500,000 cars -- 500,000 battery packs -- out of that gigafactory," said Steve LeVine, a journalist for Quartz who's writing a book on batteries and their potential to transform energy as we know it.  If Tesla hits that target, it would literally double global production of lithium-ion batteries.

For anyone concerned about climate change, this is big news.  Making every vehicle electric would reduce carbon emissions by moving cars off a pure oil diet and onto an electricity mix of coal, natural gas, and some renewables.  But we need to move that electricity mix fully onto clean energy as well -- and do it fast -- to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

That will require dealing with the intermittency of green energy sources like wind and solar.  Electricity is relatively unusual in that we don't make it until we use it -- and if we don't use it right when it's made, we lose it.  So fossil fuels like coal and natural gas have an advantage in that we control when we burn them.  But the sun shines and the wind blows where and when they will, limiting renewables to a supplemental energy source at best.  To change that, we need to be able to store renewable electricity when it's made, and then release it when we need it.

And that means batteries. Lots and lots of batteries.

How Scientists, Car Companies, and the Military Are Creating the Smartest Energy Solution on the Market