TrendForce Expects Power Batteries to Take Center Stage in 2015 as Green Industries Moves Towards Sustainable Development

If energy consumption continues to follow the same cost pattern and fail to uphold the spirit of sustainability, the concentration of greenhouse gases may double in 2050. By then, climate change will be more severe. Therefore, many countries have been promoting the use of green energies through energy subsidy policies or industrial regulations, and this has progressively led to a boom in the development of green energy industry. It is expected that the overall cylindrical battery demand will see a year-on-year increase of 32% from 882 million in 2014 to 1,171 million units in 2015, according to the newest report from EnergyTrend, a division of TrendForce. 

EnergyTrend’s Research Manager Duff Lu noted the market penetrations of LEV and BEV have steadily increased following the rise of environmental awareness. According to Lu, the demand for cylindrical batteries for transportation application will increase from 111 million units in 2014 to 145 million in 2015. This represents an annual growth of 30%. Hence, it is a perfect timing for battery cell manufacturers to enter the LEV and BEV markets because fewer cells will be needed in the IT sector, which will put more emphasis on ultra-thin products. 

Meanwhile, power tools have stricter standards for battery life due to the cells’ higher level of power outputs. As a result, demands in the power tool market will stabilize. However , power tool batteries also face an increase in cell capacity that reduces their numbers needed for each product. The overall demands for lithium batteries in the power tool market is therefore expected to remain flat around 220 million units in 2015. 

As for energy storage systems, people’s general impression of these products in the past were related to emergency or standby power supply systems, so they were mostly used in the industrial sector. However, due to the widespread adoption of renewable energies and growing demands for greater energy-saving measures nowadays, energy storage systems have started to enter residential and architectural markets. Developments in the energy storage market are expected be driven by factors such as soaring electricity consumption, rising electricity prices, increasing demands for energy efficiency, and decreasing costs in energy storage. The drives from both supply and demand side will encourage the developments in the renewable energy industry to focus more on promoting energy storage systems in other markets for the future period of 2016-2020. Lu added that as gross margins for IT industry are going down, green industry will be more of an indicator for sustainable development. EnergyTrend anticipates the energy storage market will grow to 1,850MWh in 2020.