Wood Mackenzie

Taiwanese analyst TrendForce said it expects global energy storage capacity to reach 362 GWh by 2025. China is set to overtake Europe and the United States is poised to become the world’s fastest-growing energy storage market.

A couple of weeks ago, Goldman Sachs sent shockwaves through battery metals markets, issuing a prediction that cobalt and lithium in particular were due for a sharp price decline in the next two years. But London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is loudly pushing back, outlining its reasons why it believes the call on lithium was wrong. Meanwhile, US analyst Wood Mackenzie says that the battery raw material chain will remain tight, but notes that recycling could help to ease the supply deficit.

Wood Mackenzie says Europe would need to dramatically raise its PV production capability to ensure the 420 GW-plus of new solar it wants this decade does not arrive in the form of Asian panels.

Wood Mackenzie this week made a slew of predictions for the industry in 2022 and noted the effects the US’ recently announced anti-circumvention investigation is already having on utility scale plans.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory launched a new catalyst based on nitrogen and carbon to extract hydrogen from hydrogen storage materials at mild temperatures and under normal atmospheric conditions. Furthermore, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the country is working on attracting new investments in electric vehicles and hydrogen and Norwegian consultancy and classification society DNV launched, together with 18 industry partners, a new Joint Industry Project (JIP) to enhance the standardization for hydrogen production systems that use renewable energy-powered electrolysis to produce green hydrogen.

Wood Mackenzie has made its predictions for the Chinese energy market in 2022 and said the country could install almost 120GW of solar and wind power generation capacity.

Wood Mackenzie has predicted solar equipment cost increases will ease back after last year saw the average cost of solar electricity rise for the first time in the Asia-Pacific region.

The EU has been pouring money into European battery manufacturing and recycling projects but has, as yet, been unable to address the critical question of raw materials, according to analyst WoodMac.

A lack of end-of-life batteries this decade is likely to play into the hands of Chinese recyclers located near most of the world’s production facilities, according to analyst WoodMac, but might at least help rebalance the current situation in which new products are cheaper than recycled ones.

The urgency to decarbonize the building sector has caught global attention in the lead-up to the COP26 summit, commencing on Oct. 31. Wood Mackenzie’s Ben Hertz-Shargel says that success will require a two-pronged strategy of massively electrifying building heat over the coming decade, while also investing in technologies that can pick up future heating demand if the grid cannot handle it.