Comment by ben_w

As with everything, an upper bound on the energy cost, how many n-kWh does it take to produce a battery that stores 1-kWh-per-cycle-times-m-cycles, is the $ cost of that {1 kWH, m cycles} battery divided by the $ cost of 1 kWh of energy.

E.g. if a {1 kWh, 1000 cycles} battery costs USD 50 to make, and it's made using electricity that costs USD 0.1/kWh, (USD 50)/(USD 0.1/kWh) = 500 kWh. If it needed more energy than that, they would be getting sold at a loss. As a bonus point, this upper bound naturally includes the entire supply chain including the personal purchases of the people working in the factories that make the batteries, all the way up to any waste from e.g. unnecessary private jet flights made by unwise billionaire owners of the battery companies.

This example battery then allows you to time-shift 1000 kWh of electricity from day to night before it needs replacement or refurbishment.

But note the difference between "energy" and "electricity". This kind of calculation is made more complicated by the actual energies used being quite diverse in cost and type, e.g. Pacific-crossing cargo ships are mostly fossil fuelled, the stuff the mining company uses could be any mix of electric or fossil, the aluminium is extracted from ore electrically but any steel probably isn't, etc.

The ecological cost is also strongly dependent on how far the world has gone in greening itself before that battery was made. The first Li-Ion batteries were made in an industrial base that was mostly fossil powered, new ones in China are made in an industrial base that gets 35% of its electricity from renewables.