That is the headline on a piece today from Stephen Wiimot of the Wall Street Journal. It is a report on how businesses and financiers around the world recognize that innovations in battery power will be at the center of new industrial innovation, and rapid efforts toward sustainability.

The piece, which you can read here, begins with a statement of batteries’ new, epochal role:

“The battery business is poised to grow in the 21st century as oil did in the 20th: fast and geopolitical…

“With plans to increase electric-vehicle sales exponentially in the coming years, car makers need all the batteries they can get, and at the lowest possible price. Increasingly, they also want them sourced close to home, moved partly by politicians worried about manufacturing jobs and China’s dominance of the battery business.

The piece goes on to discuss a specific company in Norway, Freyr Batteries, that is poised to take advantage of these trends. For our purposes, of course, the larger point is the ever-accelerating improvement in demand, supply, efficiency, and sustainability of the batteries behind the shift in countless industries—from massive long-haul trucks, to familiar leaf blowers.

Worth reading the whole story, and seeing these related stories.