The Presurfer pointed to this research project, that is certainly worth revisiting, concerning a group from the University of Tokyo study into creating an efficient battery out of more common substances that are in no short supply, sodium (salt) and sucrose (sugar). Traditional Lithium-ion batteries are very good at energy storage and have a relatively long lifetime, but extracting the metal, whose deposits are limited, is a dirty process and the disposal and repurposing usually is not very effective.
The team was making strides in developing a functional vehicle powering items and serving as a receptacle for holding energy until needed about a year and a half ago, but I was not able to locate much news regarding their progress. It seems like promising approaches—especially out of Japan, are sometimes disappeared down a rabbit hole, not out of some sort of conspiracy, I think, but without real explanation, nevertheless, like for all the really neat and clever technologies that won't work outside of Japan or that aren't for export—like those ultrasonic laundrettes or at least there was a significant lag time—like with using one's cell phone as a virtual wallet/coin-purse. I did learn, however, that last year, there was a summit held in the Basque region of Spain that focused on the continued growth of the so-called
Sodium Battery (the sugar part is just an extreme carmelization process to make a carbon positive pole to the anodyne of Sodium—and recalls the origin of the word
confection, from the Latin for to put together), which could prove instrumental in achieving a real sustainable balance between ecology and growing demand for power.
