Can Cheap Batteries Deliver COP31’s 35% Electrification Goal? | OilPrice.com
Haley Zaremba
Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and…
Trending Discussions
Premium Content
By Haley Zaremba – Nov 04, 2026, 4:00 PM CST
- Türkiye will ask countries at COP31 in Antalya (Nov. 9 to 20) to sign a voluntary pledge for 35% global electrification by 2035, a target experts now say is within striking distance.
- The U.S. installed a record 20.2 GWh of storage in Q2 and 30.8 GWh in the first half, while utility-scale capacity nearly doubled to 165 GWh from 88 GWh in 18 months despite Trump’s lack of enthusiasm.
- Cheap Chinese solar and batteries are carrying the shift in poorer countries too, with Pakistan leading rooftop adoption and Brazil, Chile and Kenya among those said to have passed the U.S.
Electrification will be the major focus of the upcoming COP31 United Nations climate conference, to be held in Antalya, Türkiye, from November 9 to 20, 2026. The host country will invite the attending nations to sign onto a voluntary pledge to reach 35 percent electrification on a global level by 2035. Just a year ago, this target may have seemed overly ambitious, but now, experts say that a number of factors, including volatile oil and gas markets stemming from the war in Iran, paired with enormous advances in clean energy technologies, have put that goal within “striking distance.”
The months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz has catalyzed the clean energy transition and the rate of electrification around the world. Before the United States and Israel began their military offensive in Iran back in February of this year, one fifth of the world’s oil and gas trade flowed through the Strait of Hormuz. Its abrupt closure therefore sent global oil and gas markets into turmoil and sent energy-importing countries around the world scrambling for alternatives, especially ones that they could produce and control on their home soil. And, just like that, renewable energy became the new face of energy security.
“Wind and solar cannot be embargoed, blockaded, or shut off by a foreign power,” David Frykman, General Partner at Stockholm-based venture capital group Norrsken, wrote in an op-ed for Fortune earlier this year. “Every terawatt-hour of domestic renewable generation is a terawatt-hour that no adversary can weaponize.”
But there is another, quieter force that has made this rapid global pivot toward renewable energies possible – the energy storage boom. Energy storage is critical to ensure grid stability in the face of rapid electrification and the increasing representation of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar power in national energy mixes. Major advances in the sector in recent years have made battery storage more affordable and more scalable than ever before – just in time for the world’s most recent bout of ‘fossilflation.’
ADVERTISEMENT
“What’s really become a game-changer in the past two years is the rapid deployment of large-scale batteries that can hang onto ever larger amounts of power to be used throughout the day to smooth out demand and avoid overtaxing the grid,” Forbes wrote in a Monday report.
The second quarter of this year saw the United States’ largest-ever energy storage expansion, at 20.2 gigawatt-hours of additional capacity, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. That puts this year’s total additions at 30.8 GWh – and counting.
“Although President Trump is no fan of renewable energy or batteries, utility-scale energy storage capacity still nearly doubled to 165 GWh from 88 GWh in the first 18 months of his administration,” the Forbes article goes on to detail. “Grid operators, utilities and data center developers are all buying batteries as fast as they can to meet power demand and improve grid reliability. As a result, battery energy storage systems supplied more electricity to the grid in the year’s first eight months than in all of 2025.”
Ironically, despite his best efforts, Donald Trump is overseeing one of the United States’ most significant clean energy booms in the nation’s history as solar and wind have simply become too cheap to fail. And the United States is not alone. Buoyed by a flood of cheap solar panels and battery storage systems coming out of China, even the world’s poorest countries are experiencing clean energy revolutions.
“Some countries are pulling off stunningly fast energy transitions, adding solar so rapidly, it’s become a major source of electricity over the course of years — not decades,” reports CNN. Pakistan has become the surprise poster child of this trend as residents install rooftop solar and batteries faster than any other market on Earth, as these systems provide electricity more cheaply and reliably than the country’s own beleaguered energy infrastructure. In addition, emerging economies including Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Morocco, Kenya, and Namibia have all overtaken the United States – the world’s largest economy – in their clean energy transitions.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com
Download The Free Oilprice App Today
Trending Discussions
–>
Haley Zaremba
Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and…
Related posts
“
Source: oilprice.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.
