Charging Into The Future

Lithium-ion batteries are essential to our lives and businesses—but struggle to keep up with modern demands. Inside the race to build a better battery.

- Maria Aspan

Christina Lampe-Onnerud lives in motion. Whether she’s whisking visitors through her beige offices and “dry room” laboratories, scribbling an impromptu industry analysis on a whiteboard, or just grabbing the nearest can of Coke to help a visitor visualize her company’s technology, the founder and CEO of Cadenza Innovation exudes energy, even in the most prosaic settings.

Which is entirely appropriate for someone in the business of power—lithium-ion battery power, in her case. “I feel really passionate about being part of the solution for future generations,” says Lampe-Onnerud, a bubbly, musical Swede with sunglasses often perched atop her auburn-blond curls—and two decades of starting and running battery companies under her stylish belt. “Energy is something I know something about.”

Lampe-Onnerud invokes the threats of climate change and the increasing role that batteries can play in supplanting fossil fuels. But she’s also addressing a daily, and increasingly urgent, modern problem pinned to some very old technology. Created in the late 1970s, lithium-ion batteries are providing energy for much more recent innovations, like smartphones, laptops, Teslas, smart homes, and green buildings. Our very way of life, not to mention our businesses, is increasingly dependent on battery power and storage with every passing recharge.

So the companies that can figure out how to boost power stand to turbocharge their own fortunes. The global lithium-ion battery market is nearing $60 billion, according to Global Market Insights, and demand for rechargeable batteries will grow as industries from personal electronics to automaking become increasingly reliant on their power.