As the grid gets smarter and the demand for clean energy surges, Japan is racing to ensure the power stays on — even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Battery storage, once a backstage player, is now a critical piece of the country’s energy puzzle.

Ask a Tokyo energy planner what tops their agenda and they’ll often list building out the energy storage sector. That’s a national priority, with Japan setting ambitious targets to expand renewable energy sources like solar and offshore wind, and to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. However, the intermittent nature of certain renewables demands scalable storage solutions to stabilize the grid, making battery innovation more important than ever.

Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) have long dominated energy storage, but their heavy reliance on materials like lithium and cobalt — sometimes sourced through fragile and ethically questionable supply chains — poses a risk to Japan’s energy security and sustainability.

There’s also the competition with China to consider, whose battery makers are linked in supply chains that stretch right to the source of the raw minerals, helping them lower costs.

Still, Japan’s top battery makers feel that racing to secure their own mines or supply chains in Africa and elsewhere is not the only way to compete. There is faith in new technology breakthroughs that could flip the script on resource demand.