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Field guide

Energy storage

Bottling electrons for later—same grid, different timetable (and some messy supply chains).

Set the scene

Electricity storage spans batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air, and emerging options; hydrogen and thermal storage can couple sectors. IPCC AR6 WGIII highlights falling battery costs and stresses that renewables-heavy systems need flexibility, networks, and institutions—not generation alone.

Signal, not noise

Three snaps from the evidence

3 beats
  1. 01

    IPCC AR6 WGIII Technical Summary illustrates steep battery cost declines and rising adoption alongside renewables.

  2. 02

    Technologies differ by duration and scale: lithium-ion excels at short durations; pumped hydro offers large capacity where geology permits.

  3. 03

    Modelling studies show trade-offs between storage depth, transmission expansion, and flexible demand.

Chart break

Explore the data

Lithium mine production (thousand tonnes). This tracks mined supply (Energy Institute via OWID processing)—not battery prices or deployed storage capacity. See the grapher page for caveats and citations.

Chart: Our World in Data (CC BY). Each grapher page lists the underlying datasets, units, and processing notes—use it when citing numbers.

Open on Our World in Data

No fairy tales

Where it helps—and where it hurts

Strengths

  • Shifts renewable generation to match load and can provide grid stability services.
  • Pumped hydro is a mature large-scale option where suitable sites exist.
  • Batteries scale from homes to grids and link to electric mobility.

Limits & trade-offs

  • Manufacturing and mineral supply chains raise environmental and social questions; recycling is still scaling.
  • Seasonal gaps in some regions may need portfolios beyond short-duration batteries alone.
  • Round-trip efficiency losses and cycling degradation affect lifetime costs and net climate benefit.

Read the receipts

Sources for this page

These entries are starting points for verification. Prefer the original report or dataset when checking numbers and figures.

  1. IPCC AR6 WGIII Ch. 6Clarke, L., Wei, Y.-M., De La Vega Navarro, A., Garg, A., Hahmann, A. N., Khennas, S., Azevedo, I. M. L., Loschel, A., Singh, A. K., Steg, L., Strbac, G., & Wada, K. (2022). Energy systems. In P. R. Shukla et al. (Eds.), Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (IPCC AR6 WGIII, Chapter 6). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926.008
  2. IEA Energy storageInternational Energy Agency. (2023, July 11). Energy storage. IEA. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/energy-storage
  3. IPCC AR6 WGIII Technical SummaryPathak, M., Slade, R., Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Pichs-Madruga, R., & Urge-Vorsatz, D. (2022). Technical summary. In P. R. Shukla et al. (Eds.), Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (IPCC AR6 WGIII). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926.002
  4. Our World in DataRitchie, H., & Rosado, P. (2020). Electricity mix. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix (underlying grapher datasets include Ember and Energy Institute series, cited per chart metadata).