Heating carbon material for energy storage is hundreds of years old. Thermal batteries are now chosen over lithium-ion batteries to help decarbonize industrial manufacturing.
Thermal batteries use unrefined, raw materials like brick made from clay. These bricks store energy by heating them to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit and then releasing the heat for industrial manufacturing as needed. The proponents of thermal batteries claim that a pound of brick stores more energy than a pound of lithium-ion at one-tenth the cost.
CNBC spoke Rondo Energy and Antora Energy on how thermal batteries could be the next big thing in energy storage. Rondo Energy is scaling up to produce enough thermal batteries by 2027 to cut 12 million tons of CO₂ emissions. Thermal batteries may play a critical role in decarbonizing industrial manufacturing.
