Emerging Battery Technologies to Boost the Clean Energy Transition : Cost, Sustainability, and Performance Analysis

This open access book provides a totally new perspective on the rapidly developing sector of electrochemical energy storage, putting a spotlight on their sustainability under consideration of the latest developments and emerging future technologies. A number of selected, high-level authors from different disciplines discuss the potential contribution of batteries to a cleaner society, the need for new battery concepts, necessary new chemistries and their sustainability. These include not only analyses of the most relevant technological developments in the field, but also the latest state of knowledge in terms of their applicative functionalities in transport and stationary applications within the clean energy transition framework, their potential environmental impacts, resource demands and social impacts, and the corresponding methodological advances. All these aspects are analyzed on micro-level (i.e., for the specific technology), but also on macro-scale i.e., from a systemic perspective, providing a glimpse on how emerging battery systems might cover future energy storage demand. By taking a prospective and interdisciplinary viewpoint, this book will be of interest for a broad field of readers interested in electrochemistry, engineering with particular focus on electric grids and on-board systems and energy system analysis, but also those worried about the sustainability and societal challenges related with the energy transition(s).

Stefano Passerini is Professor at Sapienza University of Rome and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology since January 1, 2023.  His research focuses on the basic understanding and development of materials for high-energy batteries and supercapacitors, with the goal to create sustainable energy storage systems from environmentally friendly and available materials and processes. Co-author of more than 700 scientific papers (Scopus H-Index: 115), a few book chapters and several international patents, he has been awarded in 2012 the Research Award of the Electrochemical Society Battery Division. Since 2015 he is acting as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Power Sources. He has been nominated Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2016) and the Electrochemical Society Inc (2020). Since 2019 he is a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Science.           

Linda Barelli is Associate Professor at University of Perugia. Deputy coordinator of the Sub-programme 2 within the EERA Joint Programme on Energy Storage. Scientific responsible of the e-energy storage and hydrogen laboratory at University of Perugia. Her field of research includes energy storage, renewable power generation and their integration in power system; fuel cell/electrolyzer and open/closed battery technologies.          

Manuel Baumann is a senior researcher and at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He was coordinator of the sub-program 6 “Energy storage: Techno-economics and sustainability” of the Joint Program Energy Storage of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) until 2022. From 2019 to 2022 he was a lecturer for energy systems at Aalen University. His research interests are technology assessment, decision-making methods, techno-economics, and life cycle assessment of energy storage technologies

Jens Peters is distinguished Ramón y Cajal research professor at the Department of Economics, University of Alcalá, Madrid. His research activity comprises the prospective sustainability assessment of emerging battery technologies with a focus on resources and recycling, but also policy analyses in the field of low emission vehicles and urban mobility. In parallel, he is working for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission on the development of the future carbon footprint rules for batteries.