Batteries Are the Least Popular Part of a Carbon-Free Grid

Here’s a shocker: Americans aren’t exactly unified in their takes on the energy transition. In a new Heatmap poll conducted by Embold Research, about a third of the more than 2,000 adults surveyed agreed that “renewable energy offers many significant benefits, with few downsides,” while about half that number said renewables have “many significant downsides, with few benefits.” Go figure.

Dig beneath the surface, however, and some fascinating fault lines begin to emerge. Often, these divides cut across class, gender, and even party affiliation.

Take the public’s opinion on batteries, for instance. Of all the possible sources of zero-carbon power we asked people about, battery storage scored the lowest, with just 23% saying they strongly supported adding them to the energy mix in their state. By comparison, 51% said they strongly supported rooftop solar, and 36% said they strongly supported nuclear, typically a controversial energy source. Only coal and “methane gas” scored lower (although when we called it “natural gas,” it polled much higher).

What’s the problem with batteries? One possibility is that even though utility-scale battery storage system fires are rare — the Electric Power Research Institute database of battery-related “failure events” lists just 15 last year, though one was a multi-day fire in a storage system in Idaho — people may group them together with far more common lithium-ion battery fires with scooters and e-bikes.

“Lithium ion battery fires are rarities when considered in the context of widespread deployment,” Lakshmi Srinivasan and Stephanie Shaw, who both work on battery storage policy and research at EPRI, co-signed in an email. “There are also important differences between grid-scale storage and electric micro-mobility devices like bikes and scooters” — namely that grid-scale batters are subject to regulations and testing requirements that your e-bike’s battery is not, which reduces the risk of fires.

As with any major piece of energy infrastructure, the prospect of grid-scale batteries can also spark the public’s generic aversion to new construction and the sight of industrial equipment. California — which leads the country in battery storage procurement and deployment — has not been free from local backlash to utility-scale battery storage projects. A long-planned project in San Diego County has faced persistent opposition from nearby residents, even after it was scaled down by 20%, while a project north of San Francisco was rejected entirely due to concerns about safety.

Besides the fire and visual concerns, many people don’t understand that battery storage projects fall under the category of clean energy, especially in California where they're most prevalent. When asked to identify which types of power generation they considered “clean,” only 19% picked out battery storage, compared to 78% for solar — which is increasingly co-located with battery storage — 76% for wind, and even 37% for natural gas. The only forms of power that ranked below battery storage were, again, “methane gas” and coal.

While solar and wind — which battery systems can support — are well known to just about everyone, widespread deployment of battery storage is still fairly new. While Heatmap’s survey showed relatively high disapproval for battery storage, it also was the third most “not sure” energy source behind hydrogen and geothermal, two technologies that have yet to reach mass adoption in the U.S. “All new technologies are a bit of a black box until education is provided,” the two EPRI researchers said.

That education might also include how people might benefit. “Storage is a key driver of grid resilience and reliability,” Srinivasan and Shaw explained. That means fewer service interruptions for any reason, and particularly during severe weather, when back-up energy may be necessary to keep food cold and shelters warm. “All that said,” they added, “another important benefit of storage is that it supports extensive use of renewables technologies, so the most use can be made of those as well as making the electricity grid cleaner for everyone.”

It’s true that not all battery storage systems necessarily lead to lower carbon emissions. And yet batteries are absolutely essential to a decarbonized electric grid — and to keeping grids with high levels of weather-dependent resources like wind and solar stable. It's no coincidence that two states with large amounts of renewable power on the grid, California and Texas, are also leaders in battery storage deployment.

“While many members of the public prioritize implementing renewable energy, NIMBY concerns can be strong in some instances, often based on misinformation,” Srinivasan and Shaw told me. “Support for renewable technologies is often dependent on the tangible local benefits of the facility, rather than broader decarbonization impacts.”

The Heatmap poll of 2,094 American adults was conducted by Embold Research via online responses from April 5 to 11, 2024. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.