6/15/2026 at 9:13:01 PM
In numbers (cell production capacity, 2025): [1] USA 70 GWh
[2] China 1755 GWh
[3] Europe 252 GWh
[1] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/us-grid-battery-storage/
[2] https://english.news18a.com/news/english_224842.html
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-swelling-wav...
by ricardobeat
6/15/2026 at 9:20:55 PM
According to IEA[1] most capacity in Europe is from South Korean companies.[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/share-of-manu...
by paulmist
6/15/2026 at 9:23:09 PM
Still physically in Europe. That’s mostly what counts.by JumpCrisscross
6/15/2026 at 9:28:18 PM
Not exactly. Most of the people who work on site at semi conductor fabs actually work in the office building next door. Batteries are similar.by throwaway85825
6/15/2026 at 9:33:12 PM
That doesn’t change that the fab is physically in Europe. Not Korea. That’s what matters. Not whose name is on the paperwork.by JumpCrisscross
6/15/2026 at 9:43:23 PM
[dead]by jdnfnfnfn
6/15/2026 at 9:42:15 PM
Not really? The questin is, if South Korea stops all cooperation with the EU tomorrow, will that fab continue to be operational? If the answer is "no", then it matters. It matters a lotby usrnm
6/16/2026 at 12:10:27 AM
This is fan fiction. The reason it matters is as a proof point that the farrago of EU regulation, labor markets, supply chains, trade policy, … is adequate to support battery production at scale.by twoodfin
6/16/2026 at 12:50:55 AM
great many things from the past 10 years would've been fan fiction, conspiracy theories, and slippery slope fallacies 20 years ago. for better or worse, this boring dystopia is not yet the end of history.by dindunuf
6/15/2026 at 9:44:30 PM
You walk in, as the EU, and assume control of the facility, by force if needed. The value is that the capacity exists within the bounds of your nation state control.China knows this, developed countries that lost their manufacturing capacity are relearning this.
by toomuchtodo
6/15/2026 at 10:42:15 PM
The value is not in the literal buildings, the value is in the people, the managers,engineers,etc and the owners who know how to run it.The people who are hired and organized by the korean comapny. This is litterlly the logic that collapsed venezuela's oil industry after it was seized by the state.
by higginsniggins
6/16/2026 at 1:17:28 AM
> The value is not in the literal buildings, the value is in the peopleThe people are physically in Europe, too. (Adding limits on remote management for national-security reasons might make sense.)
If Korea and Europe get in a war, or, more likely, China pressures them to straight up ditch that capital investment, that lets the EU hold those folks until knowledge transfer can be conducted. Again, this is a strategically different place of leverage from those assets being overseas.
by JumpCrisscross
6/16/2026 at 3:41:47 AM
How will they ensure they continue working or train replacements if their parent company no longer employs or pays them? What's to stop them leaving the country?by alxhill
6/16/2026 at 4:09:29 AM
The thing people are worried about is "Seoul is a pile of rubble and so are all the factories". The people in Europe are probably going to stay for a little bit.by klooney
6/16/2026 at 5:11:55 AM
The EU can pay them. Whos to say all these people are koreans. There might be alot of native europeans who would stayby samrus
6/16/2026 at 6:18:20 AM
> This is litterlly the logic that collapsed venezuela's oil industry after it was seized by the state.Wasn't it sanctions? The state seizing ownership should not have meant the loss of:
> the people, the managers,engineers,etc
Ownership of companies change every day across the world without collapse.
by markdown
6/15/2026 at 11:00:09 PM
>The value is not in the literal buildings, the value is in the people, the managers,engineers,etc and the owners who know how to run it.Holy shit, finally someone who understands this, this comments needs to be to the top.
Same thing happened in my ex-commie country when the communists kicked out the capitalists, shipped them to UK, US, Switzerland, and took over their factories. Over years and decades, those factories became inefficient and went bust under state control, while those capitalists who got kicked out flourished by making new business in their new homes that were business-friendly countries.
Just because you seize factories doesn't mean anything if you don't know what to do, they're just commodity equipment anyone else can buy within walls and a roof. The people with the secret-sauce know-how and IP are just as if not more valuable.
That's why US had operation Paperclip.
If you go to a TSMC factory, you'll find the same ASML EUV machines every other country and and company on the planet (minus China) has access to buy, but yet only TSMC can extract the smallest nodes and highest yields because only they managed to perfect the entire process.
by joe_mamba
6/15/2026 at 10:08:18 PM
...errrr....I think the EU performing such an action is outside the Overton window, at least for now...
China does know that but they knew how to make the deal palatable enough for auto manufacturers (other companies too, but this one IMO is a big factor in the grand scheme[0]) to all sell out one way or another for a stake in the pie, be it cheaper manufacturing or accessing that market.
Developed countries are re-learning it but are struggling with paying the piper. By that I mean, a lot of manufacturing, especially technology based, can be dirty as heck. Doing certain widgets results in environmental costs that have to be managed or externalized[1].
[0] - I posit, that Auto manufacturers probably keep a lot of documentation around, but also have a lot of history of 'good ideas' being killed by business politics one way or another. You can glean a -lot- of manufacturing tribal knowledge being able to access any existing or new incoming data on that set of signals.
[1] - No, we should not externalize, to be clear.
by to11mtm
6/15/2026 at 10:18:05 PM
The UK did just recently do that for a Chinese-owned steel mill.by mjmas
6/15/2026 at 11:18:48 PM
There are ~500 steel mills in Europe. 6 in the UK alone.by nomel
6/16/2026 at 12:57:13 AM
That doesnt make the action any less meaningful, and perhaps suggest it was done with caution, prudence and forethought.by anakaine
6/16/2026 at 4:27:42 AM
I should have made my point more clear:There's an established base of steel mills in Europe. Take one over, and your local talent pool can probably keep it running. There's less risk.
by nomel
6/15/2026 at 10:10:39 PM
You walk in and realize that there is nothing worthwile inside. The knowledge is gone or was never even there, all the inputs are gone, the process is in shambles, all you have is four walls and some bricked machinery. What now?by usrnm
6/15/2026 at 10:21:39 PM
You start with something instead of nothing.by toomuchtodo
6/15/2026 at 10:41:02 PM
Got it backwards.You had something: production. Now you have nothing.
by coldtea
6/16/2026 at 1:53:35 AM
Great Britain used to have something but now they have nothing industrial wise in comparison to the past and to get it back you have to completely change your current attitude at all levels, which will take decades for there is no shortcut and the same basically applies to America, which has been decommissioning industry and offloading it overseas since the early 1960s.by Danox
6/15/2026 at 10:40:02 PM
LOL, EU and the Dutch tried to pull this shit with Nexperia, it failed miserably and they reversed course fast.by coldtea
6/15/2026 at 10:49:34 PM
These aren't comparable situations.For one it's a peace-time situation where strong-arming interventions are met with consequences, in this case China can stop supply of critical products to punish the Dutch. In a wartime situation such supply would've been stopped anyway, so there is nothing further to lose and everything to gain from an intervention, but such an intervention is only possible if the factory is on your soil.
Second, Nexperia is a legitimate Dutch company with Dutch expertise. The Chinese bought it. The Dutch don't need Chinese expertise to operate the local factory they built and sold to the Chinese.
Third, China is a global hegemon, South Korea isn't by comparison, and South Korea is a neighbour of China, the Netherlands isn't. China could pressure a battery factory in South Korea during a military conflict by military force, but in Western Europe that's a different story.
by NoLinkToMe
6/16/2026 at 1:55:23 AM
A reversal can be done. It’s just that it takes long range planning capital and continued hard work.by Danox
6/15/2026 at 10:59:09 PM
> if South Korea stops all cooperation with the EU tomorrowThat doesn't happen between democracies and hasn't for generations, except for one democracy recently. I don't know that it happens between any significant economies, outside of wars (when and where has it happened?), except one recently. Trade is reliable, despite the nationalist attempt to use FUD. That's how countries get access to the best products and sell their best products.
by mmooss
6/15/2026 at 11:12:09 PM
It does introduce a dependency on South Korea's ability to defend its democracy, though.by holmesworcester
6/15/2026 at 11:29:43 PM
The plant will keep running regardless of events on the other side of Eurasia - during a war South Korea would want the revenue, especially from a locale safe from attack. If SK lost - an awful outcome - it wouldn't be sudden.by mmooss
6/16/2026 at 6:10:03 AM
But by that argument the EU holds all the cards because nobody can do what ASML can do. So everyone is dependent on the EU.by cycomanic
6/16/2026 at 2:25:58 AM
It was very funny watching the South Korean legislators holding off the Korean seals by barricading the doors with chairs.by throwaway85825
6/16/2026 at 1:22:04 AM
> except one recently> Trade is reliable
"reliable except when it isn't" is just a convoluted way of saying "unreliable"
by jbxntuehineoh
6/15/2026 at 11:30:27 PM
> That doesn't happen between democracies and hasn't for generations, except for one democracy recently.Neoliberalism and globalization is what guaranteed this. That is, Pax Americana. The US thought it was a great idea to become the reserve currency of the world, and became a net importer to spread the dollar. The dollar hegemony gave the US great influence and it defended it with its military. Becoming a net importer hollowed out the US industrial base as it moved overseas, which was fine until China speedran owning large parts of the industrial production and exportation. They also very quickly moved up the ranks of economic and geopolitical sway.
Now the US is ditching globalization for more mercantilist policies. That means the US will be less influential in a multi-polar world, as it can no longer strongarm so easily through the dollar. Trade will become more closed off as other countries rush to do the same now that they are less supported by the US military and economic influence and need to defend themselves more.
Thus, I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the EU stops cooperating as much with SK in the future
by jameslk
6/16/2026 at 2:15:53 PM
A good point, imho.In response to US's changes, the 'middle powers' (e.g., Canada, Japan, etc.) are working to promote the rules-based international order, including trade. But I agree risk is higher than before.
> Becoming a net importer hollowed out the US industrial base as it moved overseas, which was fine until China speedran owning large parts of the industrial production and exportation. They also very quickly moved up the ranks of economic and geopolitical sway.
> Now the US is ditching globalization for more mercantilist policies.
Rationalizing the policy is a serious error, I think. It's a political move by a group that has more power in conditions of nationalism, economic and otherwise. For example, the US is also 'ditching' military relationships, including NATO, for which there is no policy rationlization. Some believe in these things ideologically; most are acting politically, I think. Claiming policy reasons is dishonest. As another example, many countries in very different positions, with very different policy needs than the US, are behaving similarly.
by mmooss
6/16/2026 at 10:57:29 PM
> Rationalizing the policy is a serious error, I think. It's a political move by a group that has more power in conditions of nationalism, economic and otherwise.I think both are true and feed on each other to gain populist momentum
> As another example, many countries in very different positions, with very different policy needs than the US, are behaving similarly.
This may be influenced by the wave of populist nationalism but it again may also be a reaction to the reality that there isn't just one hegemony pulling the strings anymore (the US, or the west in general). Especially if said hegemony is acting unpredictable and other countries are now acting belligerent. That seems like a self-reinforcing cycle. I'm sure there's more reasons beyond these
by jameslk
6/15/2026 at 11:22:54 PM
> "except one recently"russia and {ukraine, georgia, etc}?
by dnautics
6/15/2026 at 11:25:40 PM
Assuming we're talking about all countries, not only democracies: I qualified it with, 'short of war', which excludes Russia. That leaves only one that I know of.by mmooss
6/16/2026 at 5:51:57 PM
you implying US? What agreements has the us left aside from the iran one and the paris accords (ironically the US is the country on track to meeting paris accord requirements)Hell, the US still hands tons of intelligence to ukraine, even though the trump makes big noise about cozying up to putin
by dnautics
6/15/2026 at 9:45:01 PM
If it does go both ways (say "EU stops all cooperation") and the effects are the same, and no one wants the factory to actually shut down, does something start to matter more/less then?by embedding-shape
6/16/2026 at 5:49:46 PM
Unless by next door you mean a different continent I think they'd still be in Europe. Although there are edge cases, such as if the fab is turkey but the office managing it is in a neighboring central Asian country.by bauldursdev
6/15/2026 at 9:35:57 PM
Doesn't matter if it's humans or robots, as long as they're producing batteries within reasonably stringent environmental constraints.That being said, extremely disappointing that the world's most populous country can't be arsed to maximize battery output. They don't seem to be anywhere in the rankings.
by fakedang
6/15/2026 at 11:18:27 PM
I disagree. If the majority of workers aren’t European and the supply chain comes directly from Asia then the local ecosystem is not developed and if the Asian company pulls out there is no way to keep doing it locally.by dyauspitr
6/15/2026 at 10:02:15 PM
[flagged]by llm_nerd
6/15/2026 at 10:41:28 PM
What made you jump to American exceptionalism? Their comment doesn't even mention the US. It could've been Chinese exceptionalism for all you know, which would've been more plausible since China has such crazy numbers.But honestly, why can't it just be a comment about the EU numbers without this weird jingoism attached?
by nozzlegear
6/15/2026 at 10:46:38 PM
According to projections this year will hit 300 GWh in the UShttps://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufactur...
by jweir
6/16/2026 at 12:41:06 AM
That article claims:> As for the underlying cells, it’s a similar story with a slight delay. By the end of 2025, 20 gigawatt-hours of dedicated storage cell lines had opened, and the industry is on pace to hit 96 gigawatt-hours by the end of this year.
Not sure where you're getting 300 GWh from?
by embedding-shape
6/16/2026 at 2:14:49 PM
Production and production capacity are getting swapped a lot in this thread. The top level numbers above, US 70 GWh, are straight production.Your 300GWh is likely production capacity but the number doesn't come from your article (which is excellent).
by epistasis
6/15/2026 at 11:25:41 PM
Not according to this article.by lysace
6/16/2026 at 7:15:33 AM
How much battery storage would you need to cover 12h electric energy consumption on average for each of this regions?Let's look at electricity yearly production (2025 data)
USA 4519790 GWh
China 10583360 GWh
Europe 4626240 GWh
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
Average 12h consumption:
USA 6187 GWh
China 14487 GWh
Europe 6332 GWh
How many years of cell production capacity would be needed to cover 12h electric energy consumption on average for each of this regions?
USA 88 years
China 8 years
Europe 25 years
Currently electricity is only about 19.8% of primary energy consumption.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of...
by leonidasrup
6/16/2026 at 5:38:23 PM
You mean we've barely begun building battery plants and China can already build more than enough batteries for themselves in less than a decade? Holy crap that's amazing news!by triceratops
6/16/2026 at 8:02:06 PM
As you are predicting increase in the production capacity of future battery plants, I'm predicting increase in the future electric energy consumption - especially China. It will interesting to see how the fraction battery production to electric consumption, will evolve in the future.by leonidasrup
6/16/2026 at 11:36:54 PM
No doubt. At least until now battery production capacity has by far outstripped growth in electricity consumption.by triceratops
6/16/2026 at 2:54:56 PM
Those numbers sound worse than they are.Storage production capacity is still rising much faster than energy consumption in all those nations, and the situation is probably quite similar with other pieces of infrastructure that last for decades; replacing all big electric transformers would similarly need many years of production.
Primary energy considerations are also somewhat iffy if the first step involved is often a ~40% efficient conversion into a form similarly "valuable" to electricity (like gasoline => motion).
by myrmidon
6/16/2026 at 8:35:41 PM
The numbers are as they are now.For future energy consumption I would look to India, which is on the same energy growth path as China 20 years ago. And there are many countries with low per capita energy consumption but high potential. Like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt,..
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/indonesia
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/malaysia
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/egypt
I agree that efficiency of electric motor + battery is much higher that ICE. ICE cars are now slowly replaced with EV cars. About 42% of oil is refined to gasoline, but much of oil is refined to diesel, jet fuel and used in transportation which is harder to convert to EV, like long-haul trucking, or much harder to convert to EV, like international shipping, air transport.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
" efficiencies of up to 43% for passenger car engines, up to 45% for large truck and bus engines, and up to 55% for large two-stroke marine engines"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine#Efficiency
"By generating power from multiple streams of work, the overall efficiency can be increased by about 50–60%. That is, from an overall efficiency of say 43% for a simple cycle with the turbine alone running, to as much as 64% net with the full combined cycle running"
by leonidasrup
6/16/2026 at 11:24:30 AM
Electricity consumption isn't linear (people use far less when they are sleeping), and production isn't zero at night (wind and hydro exist). Covering 12 hours is almost certainly overkill.by crote
6/16/2026 at 11:27:59 AM
> Covering 12 hours is almost certainly overkill"640k ought to be enough for anybody" :) I'm sure with more electricity available, prices would drop, meaning people will use more electricity and so on. Just like desktop applications and available system RAM, I guess some things just consume what becomes available.
by embedding-shape
6/16/2026 at 2:15:11 PM
Maybe a business, certainly not the average person. And whether or not they use it will be determined by price more than anything. If the added batteries and renewables don't translate to appreciable decreases in energy prices then I don't see people using more electricity just because it's available.The other thing that prevents an individual from using more is that electricity usage creates heat.
by cogman10
6/16/2026 at 3:02:25 PM
Of course. It just means the estimation of "years of battery production" (and its implicit "we can't possibly produce that much so the transition is doomed to fail") isn't as big of a deal as it might seem at first glance.by crote
6/15/2026 at 9:18:40 PM
Okay then makes me wonder if this recent trend is just one particularly large manufacturer ramping up production? Tesla?by causal
6/15/2026 at 9:20:31 PM
Ford in partnership with LG is one example. Stationary storage replacing EV demand that did not materialize. Gigafactories intended for EV batteries are now for stationary storage.U.S. battery industry cuts losses, shifts to new ventures amid EV bust - https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0303 - March 3rd, 2026
by toomuchtodo
6/15/2026 at 11:39:42 PM
The US is the bronze medalist memeby vinajuliette
6/16/2026 at 5:43:41 AM
I mean, I'd be more than happy to be in the top three. The issue is before we were even lower.by DaSHacka
6/15/2026 at 11:26:21 PM
Cool way to think about GWh/year: 1 GWh/year = (10 ** 9) / 24 / 365.25 / (10 ** 6) MW = 0.11 MW
70 GWh/year = 8 MW
1755 GWh/year = 200 MW
252 GWh/year = 29 MWby om8
6/15/2026 at 11:30:14 PM
Haha. Reminds me of how volt-amperes are technically the same unit as watts, but if you see VA in an electrical specification you know it means a different thing than it would if you saw W.by amalcon
6/16/2026 at 1:30:24 AM
> volt-amperes are technically the same unit as wattsvolt-amperes are joules
by om8
6/16/2026 at 1:36:57 AM
Volt-amperes are watts... watts/second are joulesby gnabgib
6/16/2026 at 4:44:19 AM
You got it backwards, Watts are Joules/second (or joules are Watt•second).by lefra
6/16/2026 at 12:38:55 PM
Oh, yes, you are right about watts. My badby om8
6/16/2026 at 4:54:14 AM
Watts * seconds are joules. Joules is a unit of energy. Watts are power.by Skunkleton
6/16/2026 at 2:07:39 AM
But not a very relevant for batteries, unless talking about discharge only once a year.Grid batteries are discharged on average 80% per day, if not more. EV batteries... well, probably about 5%-10% per day at most.
by epistasis
6/15/2026 at 9:37:08 PM
Source?by bogwog