Batteries and AI: Salt – The New Oil

Research evidence excerpt

Batteries and AI: Salt – The New Oil

Global InsightM

Executive Summary

The "New Oil Age" – what's driving it and what it brings

The AI race is shifting worldwide energy policy priorities from a pure focus on

decarbonization...

...toward affordability, speed of deployment, and supply chain sovereignty: See our

May 2026 Bluepaper.

These are all areas where sodium-ion chemistry has structural advantages:

1. It eliminates dependence on lithium, copper, and graphite.

2. It has a 30%-40% cost advantage over Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries,

which should materially expand the economic frontier of energy storage,

unlocking today's marginal applications.

3. Its superior cold-climate performance opens the storage market across northern

geographies, where AI infrastructure is scaling fastest.

The first wave of mobility electrification focused on consumer EV penetration in

passenger cars. The next phase – catalyzed by sodium-ion batteries – is likely to extend

into commercial diesel fleets, by removing the two biggest barriers to mass adoption: cost

and climate reliability.

A dual disruption: Sodium-ion batteries are not just accelerating new deployment in

greenfield Energy Storage Systems (ESS) and new fleet segments – they are also

reshaping the economics of the existing installed base. They could unlock ~50% more

energy storage demand by enabling greater attachment of ESS to renewables while

allowing projects to reach economic parity with LFP. They could also could open a

compelling pathway to electrify the vast installed base of diesel fleets across emerging

markets, by significantly compressing payback periods across cold-winter geographies.

Our bull case for sodium-ion batteries global deployment is 3.7TWh by 2035 vs. 1.6TWh

lithium battery deployment in 2025.