Sodium batteries have a lower energy density, and degrade faster than lithium for the same voltage. They are also not ready for retail markets nor mass production, as the tech isn't ready yet. In these critical next 20 years, we don't want to be waiting for new battery tech to be ready for commercial use.

City redesign can start right now. Every year we build tens of thousands of detached single family homes in suburban formats. Suburbs are absolutely terrible for the environment, with individuals who live there producing twice the average carbon a year, whereas a person living in a dense city uses about 50% less.

Removing gas engines and replacing them with EVs isn't the solution, the solution is to remove the need for a car at all. We now know tires produce significant pollution themselves, in 2017 the manufacturing alone (US only) produced 3.5 million metric tons of Co2, roughly equivalent to the Congos entire footprint. They are also the second largest polluter of microplastics, a substance whose long term effects we know little about, but there is correlation to a decreasing fertility rate, at least in men.

So how about instead of building sprawling cities that rely on cars, we build them so people can walk, bike, or take a train or bus to significantly reduce their footprint.

>You don't think re-designing fully cities is not going to release a lot of carbon and take forever?

How much carbon will be released every year strip mining the lithium and sodium out of the ground, or how much to remove sodium from sea water? How long will it take to power the entire planet with total renewables, will this be soon enough to make an impact? We have nuclear now, we have fully functional and super carbon efficient transportation now. Why wait another 20 years for a problem we can work against now?

We need a faster solution at scale, there are two main things we can do to feed the energy requirements of homes.

1. Nuclear power. You will not find a low footprint technology that can scale to the requires power levels other than nuclear. Solar and wind will require massive amounts of batteries or other storage devices to work, and there won't be enough lithium to power every single country once everyone modernizes. Nuclear, probably thorium and hopefully fusion will be the holy grail for industrial power grids.

2. City redesign. Our cities, specifically American and Canadian ones are incredibly inefficient and produce carbon like sin. By creating more walkable and dense cities we could alleviate a portion of carbon emmisions by supporting public transport, removing the need for POVs, and by having more efficient cooling and heating in dense cities. Of course, the big ticket items are going to be corporations and grid energy producers, which is why nuclear is such a good option.

Don't get me wrong, renewable energy sources will most definitely have their place in the future, I just truly think the need for a dense energy source will never change.