> The simple and sad fact is battery technology isn’t improving that much

That is not accurate.

Compared to a decade ago batteries have 5x the energy density and 1/9th the cost while charging 20x as fast (17kW in 2010 vs. 350kW today).

> while people like to pretend it’s all renewable batteries aren’t. In fact the minerals are quite finite and China is the source for a lot of them.

That is not accurate.

The largest global source of lithium is Australia, which produces more of it than all other nations combined.

China is the major source of rare earth elements, but lithium batteries use no rare earth elements.

Some lithium battery chemistries use cobalt, but LFP does not, and LFP is expected to reach almost 50% market share in the next few years. It's also very well suited to grid storage, as its pros (longer cycle lifespan, greater thermal stability) are significant while its cons (lower energy density) are mostly irrelevant for grid storage.

> In reality we should be building nuclear power plants and investing in Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Neither one of those are being produced at a scale large enough to drive decarbonization over the next 10-20 years.

Like it or not, the only clean technologies being produced at a large enough scale to meaningfully drive decarbonization of global energy supply over the next 10-20 years are wind, solar, and (lithium) batteries. There are other excellent technologies that may have an impact later (notably next-gen nuclear), but those are being installed at <1/10th the scale and scaling those up will take 20 years, by which time most of the decarbonization work will have already taken place.

For a task as large as overhauling the world's energy supply, scaling up manufacturing capacity is a huge component of making it happen. That scaling has already taken place for wind and solar -- they will be 120% of new electricity added between now and 2030 -- and is taking place right now for batteries and EVs. That scaling has not taken place for nuclear ot hydrogen fuel cells, so the real-world logistical requirements of scaling mean that those technologies will not contribute significantly to decarbonization until around 2040.

It doesn't even matter if they're better techologies, it's just a matter of the sheer time it takes to build out supply chains, manufacturing capacity, and other logistics.