Comment by Riaz Haq on July 1, 2026 at 10:48am

New Record Lows for Battery Prices

https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-lows-for...

Lithium-ion battery prices dropped again in 2025, with average prices coming down 8% to $108 per kilowatt-hour, according to BloombergNEF’s annual price survey.

China still leads

China’s lead in low battery prices continued in 2025, with average prices in the country dropping 13% to $84/kWh. This is due to a combination of lower input costs, overcapacity, intense price competition and preference for lower-cost lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells.

Prices in North America and Europe were 44% and 56% higher, which is a big part of why EVs in those regions still cost more than their combustion counterparts. In China, price parity has already been achieved in almost all vehicle segments.

This year, the lowest observed cell and pack prices were just $36/kWh and $50/kWh, respectively. These were for LFP batteries going into stationary storage applications. Similar lows were observed last year, which indicates these price levels are no longer extreme outliers.

BNEF has been doing this price survey for 15 years now, and each year when the top-line number lands, there’s a steady stream of commentary attributing the drop to producers slashing margins. Margins did dip slightly in the first half of this year, but that alone doesn’t fully account for the drop. There’s real innovation and efficiency improvements going on, too, and prices are now down 93% since 2010 in real terms.

Material price rise

Perhaps the most intriguing storyline from the 2025 survey is what didn’t happen.

Cobalt prices rose sharply this year after the Democratic Republic of the Congo introduced export quotas, and lithium ticked up, too. But battery prices didn’t rise. The industry absorbed these shocks through greater LFP adoption, long-term contracts and broader hedging strategies.

This is a markedly different picture from just a few years ago, when higher reliance on nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cathodes meant a spike in metal prices led directly to batteries bucking their long-term downward trend.

It’s probably too early to celebrate — if elevated metal prices persist, the effect will eventually show up in battery figures — but even this level of resilience to underlying material price changes shows how far the battery industry has come.

The diversification trend is set to continue in the years ahead as sodium-ion battery production capacity is starting to come online, and other new cathode and anode chemistries are approaching commercialization.

Stationary storage costs are plummeting

The average pack price for stationary storage systems dropped to $70/kWh, 45% lower than in 2024. This is the sharpest drop across all segments and makes stationary storage the lowest-priced segment for the first time.

This was largely driven by intense competition in China, where there’s immense overcapacity for battery cells specifically aimed at stationary storage applications. China’s production for stationary storage cells in 2025 is estimated at 557 GWh, over double global installations in the sector.

Comment by Riaz Haq 3 hours ago

Pakistan's Solar Boom Is Rewriting the Global South's Economic Development

https://youtu.be/EKJqOh2hqmA?is=nkcpeipDe4CJKrO0

In just two years, the country installed an astonishing 27 GW of distributed solar—roughly equivalent to the capacity of every coal, gas and oil power plant ever built in Pakistan. The result isn't simply more renewable energy. It's the rapid electrification of homes, farms, businesses and industry, powered by some of the cheapest solar panels ever manufactured.

Ember's Dave Jones explains why Pakistan's experience could become the blueprint for dozens of developing countries. We discuss cheap Chinese solar, electrification, batteries, economic development, LNG demand, EVs and why distributed energy may allow the Global South to leapfrog the fossil-fuel model that powered the industrial revolution.

If Pakistan is the first large-scale proof that distributed solar can transform an economy, the implications reach far beyond South Asia.

I think this framing better reflects the interview's central argument: this isn't primarily a climate story—it's an economic development story driven by disruptive technology. That theme comes through repeatedly in the discussion.

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