Sodium batteries are coming to Europe

In June, the world’s largest battery maker, CATL launched a product to support power grids as they transition to renewables. The TENER Sodium Energy Storage System premiered not in Ningde, south-east China, where CATL is headquartered, but in Munich, Germany.

The location was symbolic. Sodium-ion battery technology is coming to Europe and could be central to its electrification. With the European Union sending clear signals on the need to accelerate electrification, the emergence onto the market of new battery storage technologies could hardly come at a more important moment.

Sodium-ion batteries offer several advantages over the lithium-ion varieties that dominate the energy storage market. Because sodium is abundant, they could potentially help Europe reduce its dependence on Chinese lithium refining. China’s major battery manufacturers also recognise their importance and are developing products fast, analysts tell Dialogue Earth. For Europe to become cost-competitive with China’s production may be a bridge too far.

Worth their salt?

The first strength of sodium-ion batteries is in the abundance of their principal material, sodium – the chemical element found in table salt. Unlike other battery chemical ingredients such as lithium, nickel and phosphate, sodium is broadly distributed around the world in seawater and land-based deposits and is easy to produce.

Lithium, the core chemistry for almost all storage and electric vehicle batteries today, is produced at scale in only a handful of countries – the largest being Australia, China, Chile and Zimbabwe. Some of these producer countries are seeking to limit export, and some have experienced community pushback over polluting and disruptive mines.

The Salin de Aigues-Mortes saltworks in Camargue, southern France (Image: Boris Stroujko / Alamy)

As a result, prices are extremely volatile, with lithium carbonate’s price more than doubling over the last year. In late 2022, its price per tonne reached CNY 597,500 (about USD 88,900) before collapsing to CNY 172,500 (USD 25,700) by March 2023 and falling further to just CNY 60,000 (about USD 8,900) in June last year.

Processing of lithium is also highly concentrated. China accounts for an astounding 74% of global lithium refining. This is seen as a key vulnerability by European and G7 governments.

Sodium is highly unlikely to ever see massive price fluctuations, says Richard Schmuch, an expert on battery materials at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production, in Münster, Germany.

CATL is evidently aware of this strength. “CATL is committed to promoting energy independence for all countries and regions, so we have the mission to introduce a new battery material with abundant resources across all continents,” William Wu, director of CATL’s Energy Storage Technology Center, said at the TENER battery system launch event in Munich.

There are performance advantages too. At the launch event, CATL’s Amanda Xu, president of energy storage systems, Europe, claimed that their TENER batteries can operate at extreme temperatures, as low as minus 20C and as high as 45C. Certain sodium-ion battery chemistries also offer more charging cycles compared to lithium-ion chemistries, which could bring down lifetime running costs and reduce waste, says Philipp Voss, also from the Fraunhofer institute. The sodium-ion battery has 15,000 charge cycles, Xu added, while their lithium-ion storage batteries offer a maximum of 12,000.

Lithium-ion batteries almost always contain graphite, the production of which is extremely carbon intensive, says Voss. Sodium-ion batteries use hard carbon, which can be produced from a variety of abundant materials, including trees and coconuts shells. Hard carbon can also be made at lower temperatures and over a shorter period – just a few hours at around 1,200C, compared to up to two weeks at 3,000C – Voss tells Dialogue Earth. This can significantly reduce the embedded carbon emissions of batteries.

However, Voss cautions that these theoretical efficiencies don’t always translate into practice. Sodium batteries do have a lower carbon footprint than lithium ones when compared cell for cell, but sodium cells store less energy for their size, so a fairer comparison is by kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. On that basis, sodium’s advantage narrows and the two chemistries end up with a similar carbon footprint, or with sodium’s a bit larger, he explains. This is because of the enormous scale and efficiencies of existing lithium battery production in China, compared to sodium-ion’s relatively young supply chains.

For similar reasons, the production of sodium-ion batteries has not yet reached price parity with lithium-ion, says Henry Sanderson, a fellow at RUSI and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, two British think-tanks. According to Chinese media reports, CATL believes sodium-ion batteries will reach price parity with lithium by the end of this year, due to innovation in chemistries, optimisation of production and falling cost of inputs such as anodes.

A gamechanger for Europe?

Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels was starkly revealed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which sparked a gas crisis. It has been further highlighted by the ongoing Gulf crisis, with its prolonged impacts on oil and gas prices. To increase resilience, the EU recently launched the Electrification Action Plan calling for “a radical shift towards efficient electrification of demand” to “secure Europe’s resilience and security while supporting [the] EU’s competitiveness”.

Energy storage is closely tied to electrification. The plan sets targets of 200 gigawatts (GW) of storage by 2030 and 500 GW by 2040. Such storage is exactly the use case of CATL’s TENER system targets.

“Grid storage is currently the … biggest market for sodium-ion,” says Philipp Voss.

According to Sanderson, sodium-ion batteries could also offer a “safety valve” to support energy transitions in Europe and elsewhere. “You can bring out more sodium, relieve the demand pressure and therefore bring lithium-ion … costs back down. And that’s really critical,” he says. “What you don’t want to see is a rapid increase in the cost of lithium-ion batteries because that is detrimental to the energy transition.”

CATL also sees sodium-ion as a complementary battery technology, rather than something that will replace or surpass lithium. At the launch in June, Wu described the technologies as the “two foundations of future energy storage systems.” According to a CATL press release, the company will deliver its first sodium-ion battery storage systems to Chinese customers in September, and to international customers from June next year. They expect orders to reach 1 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by the end of 2026.

European industrial goals

Sodium-ion batteries could offer Europe the chance to release its electrification and storage ambitions from the grip of China’s industrial ecosystem – and the risk of export controls that come with it. China currently accounts for 80% of global battery production and data from the Bruegel Clean Tech Tracker records that 84% of Europe’s battery imports came from China.

“The dream of the west … is to establish a supply chain or ecosystem for sodium-ion technology since the lithium space is so dependent on China,” says Schmuch, the battery materials expert. “[The] technology provides an opportunity for Europe to achieve technology sovereignty in order to make their own batteries, in case China restricts the export of battery technology.”

Sodium-ion batteries are a “strategic technology” for Europe, stated an opinion published this year by the EU’s European Economic and Social Committee: “Sodium batteries offer strategic advantages for the energy transition and supply chain resilience … sodium itself is abundant, inexpensive and widely available – including in Europe.” The opinion called for “decisive and coordinated EU action to establish a competitive sodium battery manufacturing industry.”

Thus far, support has been fragmented. In 2025, the German government launched a EUR 14 million programme to support sodium-ion battery production. In the same year, the Swedish Energy Agency provided a similar EUR 6.8 million grant. With support from commercial investors such as Stellantis, French company Tiamat aims to open Europe’s first sodium-ion gigafactory in Amiens. Production is slated to begin in mid-2027 and reach full capacity of 5 GWh by 2030. This is relatively small compared to lithium battery gigafactories, but quite substantial in the sodium-ion space, says Schmuch.