Batteries will save the planet (and your building)

 I'm going to make a bold statement: batteries are the key to fighting climate change.

Advances in battery tech provide new ways of fighting climate change.

Batteries? Battery technology isn't a sexy technology. They've been around for a very long period of time. And yet, small and continued improvements in batteries over the years have, all of a sudden, opened up giant leaps in technology that are fundamentally transforming our ability to fight climate change.

Let me give you examples.

The most obvious is the electric car. Nobody wants to drive an electric car if it only goes 30 miles before the battery dies. The fact that you now have batteries that can be charged in minutes or hours and power a car for 250 or 300 miles - that totally changes electric cars from being something that wasn't practical for mainstream consumers to something that everybody now wants to have.

Advanced batteries make smart controls even more cost-effective.

Let me give you another example. Smart control technology.

The idea of having a control that uses indoor sensors to more intelligently control the heating, cooling, water, things like that, has been around for 50 years. Yet, smart controls have really only taken over in the last 5.

Why? Because Instead of running wire throughout a whole building that takes weeks and costs millions of dollars, battery technology is good enough that you can have sensors and control devices put throughout an entire building that lasts 10 years on a single charge.

In fact, a 500 unit building could be completely wired up with sensors and drop its energy usage by 20% to 30% with one day of work because of battery technology.

The combination of safer, cheaper, and longer lasting batteries is powering every aspect of technologies that prevent climate change. So next time you open that drawer cluttered with double and triple A batteries, remember that same technology is probably about to save the planet.