Breakthrough in sodium-ion battery technology could end U.S. dependence on Chinese batteries

U.S. researchers have developed a sodium-ion battery material with 15% higher energy density, rivaling lithium-ion batteries.

Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper, safer, and more sustainable, using abundant sodium instead of scarce lithium.

The U.S. holds 92% of global sodium carbonate reserves, reducing reliance on foreign battery materials.

This breakthrough could break China’s dominance in the global battery market and enhance U.S. energy independence.

A $50 million DOE grant supports further research to make sodium-ion batteries viable for EVs and grid storage.

In a world increasingly reliant on batteries for everything from electric vehicles (EVs) to grid storage, the U.S. is on the brink of a technological revolution that could reshape global energy markets. A team of international researchers, led by the University of Houston’s Canepa Research Laboratory, has developed a groundbreaking material for sodium-ion batteries that significantly boosts their energy density. This breakthrough not only makes sodium-ion batteries a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries but also positions the U.S. to break free from its dependence on Chinese battery production—a critical step toward energy independence and national security.

The new material, sodium vanadium phosphate (NaxV2(PO4)3), increases the energy density of sodium-ion batteries by more than 15%, reaching 458 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg). This brings sodium-ion technology closer to competing with lithium-ion batteries, which currently dominate the market. Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper, safer, and more sustainable, offering a promising solution to the growing demand for energy storage in the U.S.

A sustainable and affordable alternative

Lithium-ion batteries have long been the gold standard for energy storage, but their reliance on scarce and expensive lithium poses significant challenges. Lithium is not only difficult to source but also concentrated in geopolitically sensitive regions, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. Sodium, on the other hand, is abundant and inexpensive, with the U.S. holding 92% of the world’s reserves of sodium carbonate, a key component of sodium-ion batteries.

“Sodium is nearly 50 times cheaper than lithium and can even be harvested from seawater, making it a much more sustainable option for large-scale energy storage,” said Pieremanuele Canepa, lead researcher at the Canepa Lab. This affordability and accessibility make sodium-ion batteries an attractive alternative for the U.S., especially as the country transitions to renewable energy and electrified transportation.

Breaking China’s monopoly

China currently dominates the global battery market, controlling the supply chains for lithium-ion batteries and critical minerals like cobalt and nickel. This dominance has left the U.S. and its allies vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, as China has previously restricted exports of rare-earth elements and graphite, essential for battery production.

Sodium-ion batteries offer a way to circumvent this dependency. Unlike lithium, sodium is widely available in the U.S., and the production of sodium-ion batteries does not require rare or expensive materials. “The U.S. is particularly well-suited to supply both the raw materials and innovation for sodium-ion technology,” the Argonne National Laboratory noted.

Safety, cost, and performance

Beyond their geopolitical advantages, sodium-ion batteries offer several practical benefits. They are safer than lithium-ion batteries, with a lower risk of fire due to their high thermal stability. They also perform better in extreme temperatures, making them ideal for grid storage and EVs in colder climates.

While sodium-ion batteries currently have lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, researchers are optimistic about closing the gap. The new material developed by the Canepa Lab, which uses vanadium to enhance stability and efficiency, is a significant step forward. “The continuous voltage change is a key feature,” Canepa explained. “It means the battery can perform more efficiently without compromising electrode stability. That’s a game-changer for sodium-ion technology.”

A path to energy independence

The U.S. is investing heavily in sodium-ion battery research, with a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy supporting a consortium of national labs and universities. This initiative aims to develop sodium-ion batteries with energy densities that match or exceed those of lithium-ion batteries, paving the way for their use in EVs and grid storage.

Sources for this article include:

TechnologyNetworks.com

WSJ.com

ArsTechnica.com

CleanTechnica.com

more…

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TOP QUOTES from WORLD “LEADERS” infatuated with POPULATION CONTROL

The global elite are growing increasingly infatuated with the sordid ideas of population control. Living in an unrealistic fantasy, detached from reality, these entitlement-minded “leaders” and “influencers” believe overpopulation is the root cause of many of the world’s most pressing issues. Many among them view humanity as a "plague" on Earth, advocating for extreme measures to curb population growth and prevent environmental collapse. They attribute problems like climate change, economic instability, and resource scarcity to unchecked population expansion, warning of a future marked by poverty, war, and environmental degradation if action is not taken. In other words, these people want to be your God and implement population control strategies like the communist Chinese – a country that strictly limits human reproduction.

Below are 47 quotes from prominent figures—ranging from scientists and politicians to activists and celebrities—that reveal the depth of this dangerous, entitlement-minded ideology.

Controlling the environment and Earth’s resources:

These individuals argue that overpopulation strains the planet's resources and ecosystems, necessitating population control to ensure "environmental sustainability."

David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”

Richard Branson: “The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”

Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”

Julia Whitty: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it—at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources.”

Philip Cafaro: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change.”

Jane Goodall: “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet.”

Maurice Strong: “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”

Dave Foreman: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”

Jacques Cousteau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”

Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die.”

Dan Brown: “Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”

Al Gore: “One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women.”

Prince Phillip: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

John Guillebaud: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights.”

Controlling economic and social stability

These quotes emphasize the economic and social challenges posed by people, including poverty, inequality, and resource allocation.

Bill Gates: “The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050.”

Mikhail Gorbachev: “Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”

Kofi Annan: “The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid: “We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”

Sources include:

EndoftheAmericanDream.com

Brighteon.com

Brighteon.com

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Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”Matthew Yglesias: “When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”

Public health and disease control

These individuals highlight the risks of people in terms of disease spread and public health crises. Under the pretense of "saving lives" these people actually want to cull the population.

Eric R. Pianka: “Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper.”

Bill Gates: “The world today has 6.8 billion people.?That’s?headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”

Ashley Judd: “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries.”

Eugenics and social engineering

Some quotes reflect eugenicist or social engineering ideologies, advocating for population control to improve the genetic quality of humanity.

Charles Darwin: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class.”

Thomas Ferguson: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Ted Turner: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

John Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.”

David Brower: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.”

Cameron Diaz: “We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”

Dark desires to destroy life

These quotes explore disturbing philosophical justifications for population control, as some elites believe that life is not valuable.

Alberto Giubilini: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

Boris Johnson: “All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers.”

Gloria Steinem: “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”

Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving—that’s what I’m for. It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”

Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can.”

https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-01-07-top-quotes-from-world-leaders-infatuated-with-population-control.html