Not bad for something that made its commercial debut in 1991 in a camcorder.

The camera was revolutionary for the time, but the real game changer was the lightweight, powerful and rechargeable battery inside.

Soon lithium ion batteries were in everything from power tools to toothbrushes.

They made smartphones possible and put long range electric cars on the roads.

These humble batteries have been quietly powering our mobile lives for decades and now hailed as climate heroes batteries as we know them Were invented in 1800, the first electric cars were actually developed in the 1880s but fell by the wayside as the internal combustion engine took over.

Now, with the push to drastically decarbonization world, the battery is back in fashion.

Transport accounts for about a quarter of global carbon emissions provided the electricity's from low carbon sources such as wind and solar.

The switch to electric vehicles powered by lithium ion batteries will stop billions of tons of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere Today, there are about 10 million electric cars on the world's roads by the end of the decade, there'll be at least 145 million.

We're going to need a lot of batteries manufacturers all over the world are building giant battery making plants for all the electric vehicles they're producing and it's not just cars, these Giga factories can help power tech billionaire Elon musk famously said that if the world had 100 giga factories, everything from our homes to transfer to businesses could run on solar, we'll need to wait to see if this happens.

But there's no doubt that batteries are central to a low carbon future.

lithium ion batteries can store clean energy for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, sending it out on gray days with the strength and reliability that rivals fossil fuels, lithium ion batteries already power the international space station charged by the sun's rays.

A village in bihar India gained electricity for the first time in 2000 and 14.

Thanks to this technology, villages used to burn wood, kerosene and diesel.

But thanks to lithium ion batteries connected to solar panels, they now enjoy what they call clean and cheap energy independence in Brooklyn new york, a neighborhood micro grid harvest stores and distributes clean energy through a network of lithium ion batteries.

Solar panels, converters and smart meters.

In the future, we might all generate solar power, storing it in flat power banks mounted on the walls of our homes.

But clean energy use on a very large scale will need a lot of new infrastructure.

We'll need charging points for all the millions of new electric vehicles.

Large and small.

There are other challenges to extracting lithium uses vast amounts of groundwater pumped to the surface to force out the brian it's left to evaporate.

The process can lead to water shortages and leaves behind toxic waste.

Coal ball is another challenge.

Traditionally lithium ion batteries rely on this metal and 70% of the world's supply is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But mining in the DRC is dangerous and despite the high price cobalt commands, the country is one of the poorest in the world, batteries don't last forever either.

It's thought that only 5% of recycled tons end up in landfills if they're damaged, you can get zombie batteries that cause fires even underground.

But these challenges have to be understood in the context of the batteries development over the centuries.

Today, battery research is an exciting field reliance on coal ball is falling as alternatives become available and although not yet widespread recycling could grow spurred on by e waste regulation.

A recycling plant in Singapore can turn 280,000 batteries a day into 99% pure fine powders of copper, nickel, lithium and cobalt with a 90% recovery rate just over the horizon, faster charging solid state lithium batteries promised to be even more energy dense with thousands of charge cycles.

We're not quite there yet.

But with fierce global competition to perfect the technology, the multibillion dollar planet saving battery revolution has really only just begun.

Not bad for something that came for free with a camcorder.

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