Soaring Demand for Batteries in 2024

Insightful research findings from RhoMotion in this article, showing that in 2024, battery demand (lithium, lead, and zinc) has been soaring and by the end of the year demand is expected to grow by 20-25% across all end use markets and surpassing 1TWh demand (already over 500GWh). Staggering!

However, it's important to look at the breakdown here. 

EV demand still makes up the majority of the demand but growth has slowed down here which reflects general concerns over the rate of EV adoption at the moment, particularly in regions like Europe. Whereas this seems to be the decade for ESS with growth up to 50%!

Looking at location trends, almost 50% of this entire global demand is in China (representing a 29% y-o-y growth). Hardly surprising given their dominance, but also showing the uphill task the rest of the world has to catch up! North America has shown some encouraging signs with 23% y-o-y growth and demand doubling in the stationary storage market - I recently wrote a piece on the staggering BESS capacity growth ERCOT (Texas) but it seems capacity to meet demand is growing across the continent. 

On the contrary, Europe has shown some minimal levels of growth at 8%. This is consistent with what I've been seeing amongst the client base with many materials and cell producers slowing down production due to the decline in EV sales in several key countries like Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. This will hopefully be counteracted by the surging increase in ESS markets in the UK and on the continent with Germany, Italy, Spain and Netherlands capacities growing so fast.

The overall picture is one of optimism, with such significant demand growth, and it looks like stationary ESS is filling the void that the reduced EV demand has brought. Hopefully more bold EV strategies from governments plus continued more affordable ranges coming from OEMs, will help to boost this demand again. All in all, the picture is looking healthy long-term! 

Hyperion Executive Search supports clients in the battery and energy storage sectors in Europe and North America. If you're looking to expand your teams, then get in touch at david.beeston@hyperionsearch.com