Innovation and ‘New Energy’  | Manhattan Institute

Batteries are great, but we still need petroleum

To see the future of energy innovation, we need look no further than two iconic Silicon Valley inventions of our century: the Tesla and the iPhone. Both products were launched circa 2007 and catalyzed entire industries. And both were made possible by an energy-centric discovery. As the Nobel committee enthusiastically noted last year, neither would have been possible but for the discovery, a half-century ago, of the nearly magical value of lithium-battery chemistry.

If it were not for lithium, a “fuel” tank for a single Tesla would weigh more than two entire cars. Odds are that parking lots in California today wouldn’t be filled with Teslas. And if we were still stuck with yesteryear’s battery tech, your smartphone would still look like Gordon Gekko’s two-pound brick-sized cellphone in the 1987 movie Wall Street.

Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, and author of the new book, Digital Cathedrals.