Since China has been covering almost the entire global energy storage demand for years, both demand and price are now rising together. This reveals, among other things, how dependent many countries are.
Why is the demand for batteries rising? Most of today’s energy storage is made from so-called lithium batteries. The majority of these are produced at bargain prices in the Chinese region.
Germany alone is expected to import batteries from China worth over ten billion US dollars, around 8.5 billion euros (as of January 5, 2026), according to the news agency Reuters in 2025.
The reason for the increased energy demand is also attributed to the heightened production of electric cars in China (via tradingeconomics.com), the current AI boom, and government interventions by the Chinese state (via reuters.com). The rise of AI can also be explained by the increased usage by consumers. It’s gone so far that companies bought aircraft turbines to cool their data centers.
Energy storage is likely to become more expensive in the long run
How is the price of lithium developing? As AI companies require large amounts of energy storage, they, together with electric cars, are increasing the demand.
Additionally, the fact that 27 licenses for lithium mines in China’s Jiangxi province are set to be canceled by early 2026 may affect the price of batteries in the long term (via tradingeconomics.com).
Since mid-last year, lithium as a resource has become increasingly sought after and expensive. According to the financial platform tradingeconomics, the price of the material rose by about 58 percent in 2025.
Why is it problematic if there is only one producer? Because China controls almost all battery production, from raw material extraction to manufacturing (via ffb.fraunhofer.de), it puts many countries in a state of dependency.
Without the export of Chinese energy storage, many production lines would come to a halt and products relying on the energy cells could no longer be sold.
The Handelsblatt reports, for example, that the company Tesla is investing in battery manufacturing in Germany. This would somewhat reduce the dependency on Chinese exports. But not only countries are worried about the production and storage of energy. Even the founder of Microsoft is concerned about renewable energies and their use: Bill Gates already knows the energy source of the future, focusing on a special metal
