Obama pledging to double U.S. renewable energy production within the next three years and other governments close to similar commitments, we will rapidly approach a crucial tipping point.
The solution lies in storage. In order to provide the grid with significant levels of power, renewable energy requires storage -- batteries -- to save up energy when sun and wind are strong, and release their energy when they disappear. As a senior manager at the U.S. Department of Energy recently stated, "without storage, renewables will find it hard to make it big."
Storage is the biggest, most significant issue we are facing this century. All the great ways we have to generate electricity -- wind, solar, geothermal -- are nothing without an efficient way to store it.
The problem is that a power grid requires really big batteries -- and current battery technology can't scale up that big. And so the future of renewable energy -- and thus the future of climate change, and the planet -- may rest on a little-known element: vanadium.
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