You are right: there are a lot of proposals at the moment trying to replace lithium. I'm hopeful, but let's wait until they are widely adopted before claiming victory. Let's not forget the carbon and environmental cost of such alternative batteries are not known because they are not mass built and mass deployed.
I think there is a fairly big difference between these examples. solar panels need pretty complicated semiconductors. Batteries on the other hand can be made by sticking 2 random metals in a jar with some salt water. since grid storage only cares about price per capacity rather than energy density, it seems unlikely for expensive materials to win out.
When I read people talking about replacing lithium batteries I think of the decades of reading about material X replacing silicon in IC's and solar cells.