Hi Dario, Could you please explain in which way Chile is a politically sensitive region?

Um...hellllllo Japan!
Burning sugar to produce carbon releases copious amounts of CO2. Are these naive researchers living in a cave to try to justify, albeit lamely, the existence of their little sandbox?
Wouldn't their time be better spent, say, looking for a cure for cancer?

"The team heated sucrose to temperatures of up to 1,500 °C (2,700 °F) in a controlled oxygen-free atmosphere, a process known as pyrolysis." It is not just "burning sugar".

It would be an awesome feat to use solar concentrating optics for the heat required to manufacture the energy intensive renewable energy parts, such as batteries and solar cells. Nevertheless, I would assume that the amount of energy that ANY rechargeable battery could store, after adding up all the cycles, would far outweigh the initial energy expense. One needs to do an accurate energy audit before assuming EROEI is less than a favorable ratio, such as 10 to 1 (such as solar, is). Even 2 to 1 is still twice as good as well, nothing, after the biosphere is altered and economic possibilities ruined by fossil fueled depletion...
Such new advances make possible that any region in the world need not be turned into politically sensitive ones, caused by lack of proper resource distribution of elements (such as lithium).
Therefore, with science (and God?), cures for such things as cancer and countless other necessary social endeavors, could be more readily focused upon and achieved in the absence of resource WARS, economic RUIN and GLOBAL warming due to continued lack of action to implement (the already TECH ready) clean energy mass production via machine automation, 24/7 for pennies on the dollar. The future is up to you, and it WON'T stay the same...

solutions4circuits the answer to your question is no. Would your time be better spent looking for a cure for cancer?

300 mAhr/gm? or what?

@solutions4circuits Heating sugar in an oxygen free environment is unlikely to produce CO2 copious or other

There is no lithium shortage - but there was a widely believed piece of misinformation claiming this. Here's a brief article by a geologist who clarifies that lithium is truly abundant. http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1434&first=3358&end=3357

Sodium is far more abundant and accessible. I hope there are dozens of research activities on sodium batteries, using abundant and non-toxic elements such as iron and aluminum. Reasonable power to weight ratios and storage capacities would make electric vehicle technologies leap forward! Also, grid and local energy storage systems would become truly cost effective and useful. Cheap energy storage capacity in all sizes is the holy grail of the power generation industry!

The statements regarding scarcity of resources, whether it be oil, lithium, gas or whatever is in context of how technological and economical viable it is right now to mine and continue mining parts of the world. Extracting oil from tar sands and deep sea floors wasn't feasible some time ago, until the price for the commodity rose sharply - even in an economic depression. New discoveries of resources and newer technologies also play a role. But even if there is an abundant lithium resource well deep beneath the surface, it doesn't automatically mean the mining companies will immediately fawn over it. At least, not for the time being.
Recoverable oil reserves now accessible due to unprecedented rapid melting of sea ice is another example.
@solutions4circuits, even *if* CO2 was emitted from the pyrolysis of sucrose, it won't matter. Sucrose is a renewable resource. This technology should be embraced, as it uses simpler, abundant resources. Another step forward in battery technology. I'm excited to live in this time. Looking at its specific power, you probably won't see this in battery powered electric vehicles however.
The process that involves anthropogenic CO2 emissions here, is the high temperatures needed for pyrolysis of sucrose. That heat is indirectly produced by mostly burning fossil fuels.