When officials drafted Japan’s new national energy strategy last year, the development of storage batteries was seen as a longer-term process, more a 2050 than a 2030 issue. That view, however, was strongly upgraded this year, with more urgency and KPIs put on the sector.

METI’s Battery Industry Strategy is nothing if not a grand vision. With a focus on lithium-ion chemistry and all-solid-state technologies, the Strategy sees Japanese firms manufacturing more battery capacity by 2030 than is being installed globally today.

The Strategy details not only the capacity. It also estimates the investments required to set up the component and unit manufacturing, the money needed for the procurement of raw materials, and the scale of human resources that should be involved. The 30,000 people that METI says will be needed to operate the enlarged battery supply chain is only about 40% fewer than Japan’s entire nuclear power industry.

The challenges to delivering such a vision are equally grand. Among them, ironically, is the need to deliver on reducing the domestic price of electricity.