More like a few decades, if ever. Battery production is estimated to reach 6.8 TWh per year in 2035 [1]. But only 12% of this is expected to go to battery storage systems, yielding just 800 GWh. 12 hours of storage worldwide at current electricity demand is 30,000 GWh. And by 2035, electricity demand is going to be more than that, as transportation and industry is increasingly electrified and migrated off of fossil fuels.
To reiterate, this is just for 12 hours of storage. Seasonal fluctuations can depress renewable generation for days or even weeks.
wind runs through the night, and so does hydro and existing nuclear. So lets say, 15,000gwh that needs shifting? Still a big number, but...
BESS increased 45% y/y in 2025, and is looking like higher growth than that in 2026 already ~60% (1). Im optimistic that the mckinsey conservative linear estimates of growth are missing the s-curve of scaling new tech, just like they did for solar. They only have to be wrong by a little y/y and we get to 1000ghw a year by 2030 (note, they released a more recent study that pulled 800gwh/year in to closer to 2030 [2], the previous study was already too conservative) . At 1twh a year we're seriously chipping away at emissions, we're done in 15 years if nothing else changes (which of course it will, both on the demand and supply side). Still, thats actually incredible!
Wind doesn't cut out at night, but it also experiences long periods of low production: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46617 It is unquestionably an intermittent source that would require overprovisioning and large amounts of storage to even out periods of underproduction.
The projections for battery growth might be off, sure. But it's also possible the growth is a little bit under the projections year over year, and then we're looking at much less battery production five years. You're invoking uncertainty, but only considering it in one direction.
Large geographic networks like the EU really help to smooth that variance out. Anyway, on average is all that really matters here. Remember, I’m not saying we can only have batteries and if they run out we’re in the dark. We’ll use gas to fill the gaps, and emit emissions for it. All that matters is the total emissions for the year.
Yes, im explicitly considering it only in one direction, as I said I’m optimistic. I have seen plenty of data, my own & others reasoning that leads me to believe in the optimistic case here.
EDIT: look at the graph in that second McKinsey link. Look at the step for 2024, and then the massive step for 2025. And then they project much tinier steps for 26 and beyond? That’s obviously nonsense. And we can tell it’s nonsense as the number for 26 are coming in at another 60% increase y/y, and all reports point to huge increases in deployed capacity this year. And they have it at like 20%. Cmon, that’s nonsense.
That link is a graph of battery electric storage, specifically. Mckinsey's projections have battery production continuing to accelerate, but the lion's share of the output dedicated to electric vehicles rather than grid storage: https://www.mckinsey.com/features/mckinsey-center-for-future...
Rather than just proclaiming the projection as "nonsense" it'd be a lot more productive if you shared an alternate projection and explained why it's methods are superior.
Data is starting to come in for 2026.
Bloomberg just upped their prediction for 26 to 459gwh, which is already over the McKinseys most optimistic prediction for 26. And that’s before the Iran war. Bloomberg is missing the acceleration again, as they have every yeah before and keep having to correct upwards
We of course can’t scale the grid portion of battery production as fast, or even faster than what we’ve done for BEVs?
And this also disregards that second life automotive batteries are incredibly hot on the market. All those TWh of batteries will become available for stationary use when the cars are scrapped.
Maybe not in western markets due to labor costs, but definitely in developing economies.
Used automotive batteries will be at the end of their life, with only a few hundred more discharge cycles until they've totally degraded.
Again, batteries scaling rapidly still doesn't hold match up with the scale of electricity demand. Again, a day's worth of global electricity consumption is 60,000 GWh. If there's one lesson to take away, it's this: be skeptical of people who talk about "scale" but neglect to actually give figures for that scale.
All recent research coming are showing that BEV batteries last longer than expected in real world conditions.
You do realize that with 60 TWh we’re arguing about which decimal of 99.x% renewables the grid sits at?
We have in a few years scaled BEVs to 3 TWh per year. For grid duty batteries last 10-15 years. They are essentially the same batteries. Some have different form factors and whatever, but the core is the same.
This seems like grasping for the straws. Denying what’s infront of your eyes because we still need a few more years of scaling until it will happen no matter what, just assuming a continued buildout to saturation.
The grid works on timescales of decades. With the current deployment rate, no matter how you try to belittle it, we’ve already locked in a complete revamping of our grids.
Global battery deliveries in 2025 was 1,600 GWh, not 3,000 GWh. Of that, only 300 GWh was used for grid storage. Even projections a decade out to 2035 only predict that yearly battery storage deployment will be 800 GWh per year, the vast majority of battery production will be used for EVs rather than grid storage.
Again, there's a reason why people talking about batteries scaling don't put their numbers in the context of electricity demand. Even with the predicted exponential growth of battery production, the scale of electricity demand is on a different level.
We’re seeing the reshaping of the entire global energy system. Either we jump on the train or get run over.