Five years ago, battery storage made up just 2 percent of CATL’s sales. Today it accounts for a quarter, and the company wants half by 2030.
That shift tells you where the world’s largest battery maker thinks the money is. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. has been building its storage business for years, but OilPrice.com reports the move away from electric vehicles has been supercharged by the artificial intelligence boom.
Data centres need power
Hyperscalers have pushed up energy demand forecasts everywhere, and batteries are turning into a core piece of energy security planning for Big Tech and utilities alike. Ember, the energy think tank, calls them the “ultimate clean flexibility tool for making clean electricity available when it is needed most, while keeping power grids stable and secure.” Orders and production are climbing around the world.
Kurt Kelty, General Motors’ vice president of batteries, propulsion and sustainability, said in a 2025 press release that “the market for grid-scale batteries and backup power isn’t just expanding, it’s becoming essential infrastructure.”
China is well ahead, all the same. It added more battery storage capacity in 2025 than the United States and the European Union combined, and Chinese firms lead in manufacturing and in new designs.
The sodium-ion system
This month CATL unveiled a sodium-ion battery storage system, called TENER. Nearly all storage systems today run on lithium-ion cells. Lithium has strengths in energy density and in handling a wide temperature range, but supplies are finite, geopolitically tangled, and spot prices swing. Sodium is far more abundant and less prone to catching fire, so it could give battery markets some diversity.
William Wu, director of CATL’s energy storage system technical centre, was quoted by the South China Morning Post: “While energy storage becomes the critical infrastructure in our modern society, the stable and sufficient supply of raw materials plays an important role in this industry.” He added that “CATL is committed to promoting energy independence for all countries and regions.”
Domestic deliveries of the sodium-ion systems start in September. Global shipments are slated for June 2027.
The American market
OilPrice expects the United States to be a significant customer as Silicon Valley builds out large data centre campuses and trade ties with China recover. Last month, it noted, China’s green energy exports to the US jumped after Trump’s diplomatic visit to Beijing in May.
CATL already has a large footprint in American markets, and some experts find that worrying. They fear the United States is falling behind in the clean energy race and leaning too heavily on Chinese technology and supply chains, which they describe as a national security question as well as an economic one.
