Enhancing EU strategic autonomy and developing a greener and bluer economy: the potential of the sodium battery manufacturing sector

Europe has decided to launch the construction of gigafactories to produce batteries at high volumes to reindustrialize our continent and enhance our strategic autonomy. Yet, these projects focus on lithium batteries and to a great extent neglect the emerging technology of sodium batteries.

Sodium is present everywhere in Europe at a low cost, and desalinisation projects linked to an EU Blue Deal would increase this availability. The potential of a sodium battery manufacturing sector is therefore extremely interesting from both a competitive and sustainability point of view.

This opinion will present an overview on the state of play and development potential of this emerging industry which provides a less costly and environmental friendly alternative to lithium batteries. It will also showcase the different implementation prospects of such batteries (e.g sectoral industries, local and municipal territories, private households), and present the way forward for the industry.