Storage on the Way to Dominate Energy Patents

According to the new 2026 State of Energy Innovations report by the International Energy Agency, patents associated with energy storage are expected to reach more than 50 percent of all energy patents filed worldwide in 2024. The IEA describes this number as very preliminary, however.

Since the year 2002, the share of energy storage patents has risen from just 14.4 percent to almost 44 percent as of 2023. Around the turn of the millennium, the energy topic with the most patent filed had been energy efficiency at 23.8 percent, still an important topic today at roughly the same share of patents as of 2023. Electric mobility (excluding batteries), solar and wind also have kept their relative share in patents stable from 2000 to 2023. Before the energy storage boom, their patent filing took up larger shares, however, peaking in 2018 at 13.7 percent for electric mobility and in 2010 for solar and wind at 12.6 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively. Fossil fuel patents meanwhile declined from 18.8 percent in the year 2002 to just 6.5 percent in 2023 after reaching a high of more than 17 percent again in 2014 at the height of the fracking boom.