About the lecture:
Battery Worlds: how electro-chemical energy storage is remaking economic and development geographies.
Growing demand for electrical energy storage is producing new transnational economies of battery production in which firms, states and other actors cooperate and compete to capture value. The boom in ‘gigafactory’ construction is well known, but what about the wider geographies that battery production sets in motion? What worlds are being formed through the rise of energy storage in electric vehicles and stationary applications? In this talk he unpacks some of the new geographies of lithium-ion battery manufacturing, from raw material production through to recycling. Bridge highlights a fundamental tension between globalising supply chains to reduce costs, and the geopolitical strategies of states to ‘onshore’ battery production and protect key parts of the supply chain. He shows how the actions of firms, states and communities are remaking economic and development geographies all along the value chain.