FROM: LDES Council Wesbite
LDES Council Adds 12 New Members Demonstrating Strong Momentum Around Using LDES Technology to Accelerate Carbon Neutrality
01 February 2022 –
The Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Council, a global CEO-led organisation focused on replacing the use of fossil fuels to meet peak demand with zero-carbon long duration energy storage, today welcomed 12 new members since its launch in November 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow. The organisation now has a total of 36 diverse companies in regions across the world representing the full spectrum of the energy transition – including technology innovators, equipment providers, energy developers, utilities, grid operators, investors, and end-users.
The LDES Council has two categories of membership: technology members who are leading the innovation in long duration energy storage and anchor members that include capital providers, equipment manufacturers, low-carbon energy system integrators and developers, and industry and services customers. Joining the LDES Council are five anchor members: Corre Energy, Google, Microsoft, Ørsted, and Sumitomo SHI FW; as well as seven technology members: , Kyoto Group, Magaldi, SEnervenue, KraftblockENS, TORC Clean Energy, and VoltStorage.
Building upon the Council’s global footprint, our members are based across Australia, Canada, Europe, India, the Middle East, and the United States. The diverse perspectives and broad range of experience offered by the new LDES Council members will add tremendous value as the organisation works to support governments, grid operators and major electricity users in the global adoption of cost-effective long duration energy storage to replace the use of fossil fuels.
On the topic of joining the LDES Council, new members made the following comments:
Maud Texier, Carbon Free Energy Lead at Google, remarked, “At Google, we know that achieving 24/7 carbon-free energy will require improving and diversifying our technological toolkit, and we view long duration energy storage as a key pillar on the path to a carbon-free future. We are glad to be an anchor member of the LDES Council, to help accelerate innovation and deployment in this important space.”
Upma Koul, VP Strategy and Business Development for Energy Storage at Sumitomo FHI SW, also noted, “We believe long duration energy storage can enable 100% renewable power systems and grids affordably and sustainably while reaching global decarbonisation goals. Our vision is to enable decarbonisation of the energy ecosystem to meet the climate change goals and objectives.”
Camilla Nilsson, CFO and Interim CEO of Kyoto Group added, “We at Kyoto Group are excited and eager to join the LDES Council. Accelerating the decarbonisation of our energy system is an important and urgent task, which requires knowledge sharing, collaboration and technology development. We believe that thermal energy storage and the use of renewable heat is a key contributing technology to enable sustainable business based on green energy. We look very much forward to take part in this collaboration with key players in the LDES and renewable energy industry to enable a future where green energy is available to everyone.”
Jorg Heinemann, CEO of Enervenue, concluded, “The LDES Council is quickly establishing a unified voice in the global energy discussion by helping push long duration energy storage policy and technology forward. This effort is critical as the world transitions toward a more distributed electricity grid. EnerVenue is proud to be leading the energy transformation as part of the LDES Council with our differentiated ability to support short and long duration energy storage that is safe, long lasting, and flexible.”
About the LDES Council
The LDES Council is a global, CEO-led organisation that strives to accelerate decarbonisation of the energy system at lowest cost to society by driving innovation, commercialisation, and deployment of long duration energy storage. While supporting the deployment of long duration energy storage, the LDES Council is independent of any specific technology and its members span the spectrum of innovation and include companies working on electrochemical, mechanical, thermal, and chemical LDES. The LDES Council provides fact-based guidance and information to governments, industry, and broader society, drawing from the experience of its members, which include leading energy companies, technology providers, investors, and end-users. McKinsey & Company is involved as a knowledge partner to the Council.
In 2022, the LDES Council is prioritizing research into a number of decarbonisation topics, led by Working Groups formed from member company representation. Building on the 2021 Net zero-power report (link here), the Council is looking more closely at areas such as thermal flexibility, including power and heat coupling. Working Groups are also being developed around research topics across 24/7 renewable Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), regulatory/policy tools, evaluation of benefits to transmission and distribution networks, cost-optimal net-zero analyses for mining and island applications, and potential financing mechanisms.
About Our New Members
Corre Energy: Corre Energy is focused on the development of grid-scale underground renewable long duration energy storage facilities, as well as the production and sale of green hydrogen, all of which play a key role in decarbonisation and deployment of renewable energy sources. These storage and hydrogen production facilities are designed to provide a balancing solution to wholesale electricity markets and provide industrial customers with a cost-effective and consistent supply of hydrogen.
EnerVenue: EnerVenue is the first company to bring nickel-hydrogen battery energy storage to the C&I and grid-scale industries. Originally deployed by NASA and then further refined and cost-reduced by Stanford University, EnerVenue’s nickel-hydrogen technology offers compelling value and differentiation in terms of short and long duration flexible charging and discharging over 30,000 cycles with minimal degradation resulting in no need for augmentation; zero risk of fire for a reliably safe operation; and minimal OPEX due to no augmentation, no fire suppression systems, and no air conditioning systems needed.
Google: In 2017, Google became the first company of its size to achieve 100% annual renewable energy matching. To achieve full decarbonisation, Google is aiming for 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. That means sourcing local clean energy for every hour of operations, everywhere. Google is actively collaborating across industries to accelerate innovation in three areas: electricity purchasing and consumption; carbon-free energy technologies; and policy advancements that drive clean energy access and adoption
Kraftblock: Kraftblock develops and sells multifunctional high temperature energy storage (up to 1300°C) systems to decarbonise industries like steel, glass, ceramics but also to help renewable energy to have its breakthrough in industrial heating systems. Our core-unit, the TES itself, is modular, easily scalable, highly efficient and affordable. Kraftblock is located in Germany, Sulzbach/Saar.
Kyoto Group: Kyoto Group aims to capture and manage the abundant energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind power and apply it to reduce the CO2 footprint of industrial thermal loads. Kyoto Group plans to lease, operate and sell Heatcube thermal batteries based on molten salt with capacity from 5MW, enabling industrial consumption of low-cost heat sourced from renewable energy by decoupling the time from when energy is produced to when it is used as heat.
Magaldi: Magaldi is an Italian world leader company with almost a hundred years of history and experience in systems for transporting materials at very high temperatures. Magaldi Green Energy, member of Magaldi Group, will focus on energy transition through its patented STEM Concentrated Solar Thermal and MGTES technologies, charging and discharging energy through its fluidised sand bed. The sand fluidisation system has significant benefits: large thermal storage capacity, high thermal efficiency, fast response times, 100% ESG compliant thanks to the use of natural materials, and many more.
Microsoft: Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. The company has been carbon neutral across the world since 2012 and commits to being carbon negative by 2030. Our goal is to promote sustainable development and low-carbon business practices globally through our sustainable business practices and cloud-enabled technologies.
Ørsted: The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, and bioenergy plants, and provides energy products to its customers. Ørsted ranks as the world’s most sustainable energy company in Corporate Knights’ 2022 index of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world and is recognised on the CDP Climate Change A List as a global leader on climate action. Headquartered in Denmark, Ørsted employs 6,672 people.
SENS: SENS provides innovative resource efficient solutions for large-scale, long-duration storage of power and heat. As the owner of Pumped Hydro Storage, SENS aims to be the first in the world to use the proven, high efficiency technology of pumped hydroelectric storage and construct it in a new setting – underground in mines (UPHS). This minimises its environmental impact and enables construction in areas where it was previously not possible, e.g. due to lacking topography. The people behind SENS have an extensive background from the wind and solar industry and the company has collaborations in the Nordics, Baltics. Poland, South Africa and more and is supported by the EU through Life.
Sumitomo SHI FW: Sumitomo SHI FW (SFW) has been providing innovative and environmentally friendly energy solutions to our customers for over 100 years. Our mission is to enable the energy transition to a carbon-free future through decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation. Our solutions expand from the world-leading circulating fluidised bed (CFB) technology to long-duration energy storage (LDES), waste-to-energy (W2E), waste-to-value (W2V), carbon capture and digital services for the global power and industrial markets. Through co-creation, partnerships, and ecosystem collaboration SFW aims to accelerate the speed of decarbonisation and create more value for our customers. We are global energy experts with more than 1800 talented staff, across multiple locations, covering the globe in North America, Europe, and Asia.
TORC Clean Energy: TORC’s novel low temperature, low cost, high efficiency, long life, scalable and readily deployable Thermal Battery is the ideal solution for baseload distributed zero emission power generation. The heat pump charging, ORC generator discharging (using a common working fluid) with high energy density PCM storage in an integrated containerised package where storage capacity can be scaled independently to charge/discharge capacity results in a leading LCOS. The solution can be application specific for electrical only or a combination of electrical and thermal generation and/or consumption. The low temperature operation supports service long life and is well suited to many thermal applications. TORC has multi-national channel partners in the C&I (commercial & industrial) sector and mining sectors for its initial deployment of the technology. The technology leverages JV partners gTET, an Australian business designing and manufacturing industrial thermal energy solutions with core technology in ORC generators and high temperature heat pumps, and ESPL, and Australian business with interests in mining, SOFC technology and novel low temperature PCMs.
VoltStorage: VoltStorage is a fast-growing technical pioneer in stationary flow batteries for long duration storage applications, based out of Munich (Germany). We are developing and producing energy storage system based on ecological redox flow technologies since 2016. Thanks to our proven Vanadium Redox Flow technology as well as our newly developed low-cost Iron Salt battery technology, we can provide cost-effective solutions for (ultra) long duration storage demands in the commercial, industrial and grid scale sector. With the expertise of our international R&D team, knowledge in production of this technology and the experience of operating one of the largest fleets of flow batteries in the world, we are striving to achieve our vision: Making renewables available 24/7.
To read more about the other members and the LDES Council, please visit our website on https://www.ldescouncil.com/