Will Tope, CEO of LiNa Energy, discusses low-cost sodium batteries and how deep tech companies find product-market fit on Episode 31 of Scaling Green Tech, a podcast by Adopter.

Tope explains that LiNa Energy did not invent a new chemistry. The company revived the ZEBRA battery, a sodium-based design from the 1980s that is inherently safe and heat-tolerant but historically too expensive to manufacture. LiNa's contribution is the electrolyte: a ceramic component that once had to be baked slowly in thick tubes, now re-engineered as a thin layer around 60 microns thick and produced through a faster, lower-energy process. That change brings the battery cost close to the price of its abundant raw materials. It positions salt batteries as a low-cost option for long-duration storage in hot markets such as India and the Middle East, where lithium-ion systems struggle.

This episode is relevant for energy storage founders, deep tech CEOs, grid infrastructure investors, and commercial leaders working on go-to-market strategy, business development in long sales cycles, and marketing for hard tech companies.

Guest profile

Will Tope is the CEO of LiNa Energy. He trained as a chemical engineer and began his career as a process engineer at the Fawley Refinery near Southampton. He then spent over ten years on the commercial side of oil and gas, covering energy origination and mergers and acquisitions, including sell-side work in Aberdeen and buy-side work in the United States. Towards the end of that period, he was chief of staff for a new trading group at ExxonMobil, where a focus on power first led him to grid-scale batteries. He joined LiNa Energy in 2021 and later stepped up to CEO.

LiNa Energy is a Lancaster-based company developing solid-state sodium batteries, also described as salt batteries, for long-duration and grid-scale energy storage. The company runs two laboratories and a pilot manufacturing site in Lancaster, and has run pilot projects in India with Tata and testing in the Middle East. Its technology targets hot climates, where conventional lithium-ion systems carry higher real-world cost.

Company website: https://www.lina.energy/

Find Will Tope on LinkedIn.

Topics covered

• Explaining LiNa Energy and salt batteries to a five-year-old

• The elevator pitch and reviving the 1980s ZEBRA chemistry

• The electrolyte bottleneck and why the old design was expensive

• Manufacturing the thin ceramic electrolyte

• From individual cells to container-scale battery systems

• Commercialisation stages and the Lancaster pilot manufacturing line

• From oil and gas at ExxonMobil to climate founder

• Business development versus sales in deep tech

• Escaping the pilot graveyard

• Finding product-market fit in hot markets: India and the Middle East

• Customer signals versus investor advice on data centres

• Marketing, "external eyes," and what is next for LiNa Energy