We gotta get a better battery. But how?

“It will not be easy. It will not be immediate. But it must be done.” With that imperative, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that required California to obtain all of its electricity from sources like solar, wind, and hydropower by 2045. It was an admirably ambitious goal, commensurate to the civilizational challenge of reducing the carbon emissions responsible for climate change. The only difficulty was that neither Brown nor any anyone else knew how to do it.

Building a better battery.

The world’s fifth-largest economy had been on track to get half its power from clean sources by 2020. But by signing the new law on September 10, the governor made a promise that existing technologies cannot keep. The problem with advanced renewable sources of energy like solar and wind is that the sun doesn’t shine at night and wind blows intermittently, and both sun and wind (especially in California) are seasonal, waxing in summer and waning in winter. Right now, technologists don’t know how to store electricity from renewable energy at scale cheaply or efficiently. The person or group who solves that problem will be the Prometheus of our age.

Read the Wired story by Jason Pontin - “We gotta get a better battery. But how?”