Battery storage has reached a cost and performance tipping point and is transforming power grids worldwide. Lithium iron phosphate batteries have become the dominant technology for grid storage, sharply reducing costs while improving safety and extending project lifetimes. Sodium-ion batteries could drive the next major cost reduction, particularly as rising lithium prices strengthen their business case. Yet while global deployment is accelerating, Europe is falling behind leaders such as Australia, China and the US. Faster battery deployment would help Europe revive solar growth, reduce price volatility and capture more value from domestic renewable electricity. Europe should accelerate deployment of mature technologies with limited short-term energy security risks, while using targeted investment in domestic science, engineering and high-tech manufacturing to manage the more critical long-term security risks. It should especially focus on areas where it can build strategic advantage and lead globally, such as battery recycling and circular value chains.
As the world’s largest trading bloc, the EU has an opportunity to use its economic power to drive greater unity within the broader European continent, build stronger alliances with the rest of the world and create a path towards greater global stability. International trade and market liberalisation have historically been the building blocks upon which stronger international partnerships have been built and are also one of the foundations upon which the process of European integration was built in post-war Europe. With an increasingly unstable world order, there is an even greater need for EU and allied non-EU European countries to forge stronger trade ties and collectively strive to be the main trading partner for emerging economies around the world, from Africa to Mercosur countries to India. The EU needs to apply what it has learned from its trade relationship with China, to ensure symmetrical and reciprocal market liberalisation. There are also lessons to be learned from how Singapore has deployed market liberalisation as an engine for prosperity and stability. This article argues that through liberalisation and a focus on the business of trade before pursuing a norms-based relationship, the power of free markets to deliver jobs, growth and a belief in democracy can be unlocked.
