Engineers are racing to find better ways to build and power machines, pushing energy efficiency up incrementally as they go. Still, the U.S. Energy Information Agency forecasts that global demand for electricity will grow 2.3 percent per year through 2035.

Busses, trains, automobiles and aircraft are either starting to move off of fossil fuels for direct electrical motive energy or have more systems that draw current. And a growing stock of buildings are being energized using intermittent power sources like wind and solar. All of this demand is highlighting a major obstacle—batteries need to get better at safely storing large amounts of energy to power our modern world.

Without a major innovation in energy storage, much of the promise of greening aviation, militaries, power generation and other industries will be stuck in the mire.