SMM11, 21 Feb: the global energy storage market will soar to 942 gigawatts by 2040, and that growth will require $620 billion in investment, according to a new Bloomberg NEF forecast released on Tuesday. The sharp drop in battery costs is a key driver of this boom. BNEF reckons that the cost of capital for utility-scale lithium-ion storage systems will fall by another 52 per cent by 2030. "costs are falling faster than we expected," Yayoi Sekine, an analyst at BNEF in New York, said in an interview. Batteries will slowly infiltrate our daily lives.

Two important markets will receive particular attention in the future. China, which is building battery manufacturing capacity, will become a "leader" in the global battery industry. At the same time, California has introduced a series of measures in recent years that will directly or indirectly stimulate more battery production, including legislation requiring all states to generate electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.

Sunrun Inc., a rooftop solar company based in San Francisco "Storage is the next step in the development of renewable energy," Edward Fenster, executive chairman of (Edward Fenster), said in an interview. If we are to get 100% renewable energy, we need to store it.

Here are six key aspects of the latest BNEF battery forecast:

At present, the cumulative energy storage power deployment is expected to exceed 50 gigawatt hours by 2020. That is three years ahead of last year's BNEF forecast. By 2040, energy storage could be equivalent to 7 per cent of the world's total installed capacity. By 2040, the Asia-Pacific region will account for 45% of total installed capacity on a megawatt basis. Another 29% will be in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the rest will be in the Americas. With the development of the battery industry, China, the United States, India, Japan, Germany, France, Australia, South Korea and the United Kingdom are likely to become "leaders" in the future development of the industry.

South Korea dominates the battery market today, but will be overtaken by the United States in the early 1920s, but the final "winner" is likely to be China.

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