#Grid-scale Storage

[electronalytics]

Lithium-ion Battery Pack Market Promising Growth and by Platform Type, Technology and End User Industry Statistics, Scope, Demand by 2032

The lithium-ion battery pack market has experienced significant growth in recent years and is expected to continue expanding in the coming years. Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in various applications, including consumer electronics, electric vehicles (EVs), energy storage systems, and industrial applications.

The lithium ion battery market size is projected to surpass around USD 307.8 billion by 2032 and it is poised to reach at a CAGR of 18.3% to forecast period.

Several factors have contributed to the growth of the lithium-ion battery pack market:

Increasing demand for electric vehicles: The rise in environmental concerns and the push for sustainable transportation solutions have driven the demand for electric vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries are the preferred choice for EV manufacturers due to their high energy density, longer life cycle, and faster charging capabilities.

Growing renewable energy installations: With the increasing adoption of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, the need for energy storage systems has also risen. Lithium-ion battery packs are used to store excess energy generated by renewable sources for later use, improving grid stability and enabling better integration of intermittent power sources.

Advancements in technology: Ongoing research and development efforts have led to advancements in lithium-ion battery technology, including improvements in energy density, safety, and cost reduction. These advancements have made lithium-ion batteries more reliable and affordable, driving their adoption across various industries.

Portable electronics and consumer devices: Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronics such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, and wearables. The increasing demand for these devices has contributed to the growth of the lithium-ion battery pack market.

Government initiatives and incentives: Many governments worldwide are implementing favorable policies and providing incentives to promote the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. These initiatives have created a supportive environment for the growth of the lithium-ion battery pack market.

Here are the key points regarding the lithium-ion battery pack market:

Market Growth: The lithium-ion battery pack market has been experiencing robust growth in recent years and is expected to continue expanding at a significant rate.

Application Diversity: Lithium-ion battery packs are used in a wide range of applications, including electric vehicles, energy storage systems, consumer electronics, and industrial applications. This diversification of applications has contributed to the market's growth.

Electric Vehicles (EVs): The increasing adoption of electric vehicles is a major driving force behind the lithium-ion battery pack market. These batteries provide the high energy density, longer lifespan, and fast charging capabilities required for EVs.

Energy Storage Systems: The demand for energy storage systems, particularly for renewable energy integration and grid stabilization, has boosted the lithium-ion battery pack market. These systems store excess energy from renewable sources and discharge it during peak demand periods.

Technological Advancements: Ongoing research and development efforts have led to technological advancements in lithium-ion batteries. This includes improvements in energy density, safety features, and cost reduction, making them more attractive for various applications.

Cost Reduction: The cost of lithium-ion battery packs has been decreasing over the years due to economies of scale, technological advancements, and manufacturing efficiency. This cost reduction has made them more accessible and affordable for various applications.

Overall, the lithium-ion battery pack market is driven by the growth in electric vehicles, energy storage systems, portable electronics, and supportive government policies. Technological advancements and cost reductions will continue to fuel market expansion in the future.

Here are five key points outlining the demand for lithium-ion battery packs in the market:

Electric Vehicle (EV) Adoption: The increasing adoption of electric vehicles is driving the demand for lithium-ion battery packs. As governments and consumers prioritize sustainability and cleaner transportation, the demand for EVs and their associated lithium-ion battery packs is growing.

Energy Storage Solutions: The demand for energy storage systems, including grid-scale storage and residential energy storage, is fueling the demand for lithium-ion battery packs. These systems help integrate renewable energy sources, stabilize the grid, and provide backup power during outages.

Portable Electronics: The popularity of portable electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearable devices is driving the demand for compact and lightweight lithium-ion battery packs. Consumers seek longer battery life and faster charging capabilities for their portable devices.

Industrial Applications: Lithium-ion battery packs are in demand for various industrial applications, including aerospace, defense, medical devices, robotics, and electric tools. These industries rely on reliable and high-performance power solutions, leading to increased adoption of lithium-ion battery packs.

Government Policies and Incentives: Government policies and incentives that promote the adoption of electric vehicles, renewable energy storage systems, and clean energy technologies contribute to the demand for lithium-ion battery packs. These policies create a supportive market environment and drive market growth.

We recommend referring our Stringent datalytics firm, industry publications, and websites that specialize in providing market reports. These sources often offer comprehensive analysis, market trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape, and other valuable insights into this market.

By visiting our website or contacting us directly, you can explore the availability of specific reports related to this market. These reports often require a purchase or subscription, but we provide comprehensive and in-depth information that can be valuable for businesses, investors, and individuals interested in this market.

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Market Segmentations:

Global Lithium-ion Battery Pack Market: By Company • Panasonic Corporation • Samsung SDI Co. Ltd. • LG Chem Power, Inc. • Toshiba Corporation • Hitachi Chemical Co. Ltd • Automotive Energy Supply Corporation • GS Yuasa International Ltd • Johnson Controls, Inc. • Shenzhen BAK Battery Co., Ltd. • Future Hi-Tech Batteries Limited • BYD Co. Ltd. • Tianjin Lishen Battery Co. Ltd. • Amperex Technology Ltd. • Hunan Shanshan Toda Advanced Materials Co. Ltd. • Pulead Technology Industry Co., Ltd. Global Lithium-ion Battery Pack Market: By Type • Series Battery Pack • Parallel Battery Pack Global Lithium-ion Battery Pack Market: By Application • Consumer Electronics • Automotive • Medical • Grid Energy and Industrial Global Lithium-ion Battery Pack Market: Regional Analysis All the regional segmentation has been studied based on recent and future trends, and the market is forecasted throughout the prediction period. The countries covered in the regional analysis of the Global Lithium-ion Battery Pack market report are U.S., Canada, and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Rest of Europe in Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Argentina, Brazil, and Rest of South America as part of South America.

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In general, market research studies offer companies and organisations useful data that can aid in making decisions and maintaining competitiveness in their industry. They can offer a strong basis for decision-making, strategy formulation, and company planning.

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[energy-storage-solutions]

Grid-Scale Energy Storage Solutions: Powering the Future of Renewable Energy

Explore the transformative impact of grid-scale energy storage solutions on the energy sector. Understand how advanced storage technologies enhance grid stability, integrate renewable energy sources, and support a sustainable, resilient power infrastructure."

[rechargeablepowerenergy]

Grid-scale Energy Storage | Rpe-na.com

Rpe-na.com can help you explore the potential of grid-scale energy storage. Transform your energy strategies and welcome a sustainable future.

[reasonsforhope]

"The man who has called climate change a “hoax” also can be expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combating, climate change. But plenty of climate action would be very difficult for a second Trump administration to unravel, and the 47th president won’t be able to stop the inevitable economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables. 

“This is bad for the climate, full stop,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Business School. “That said, this will be yet another wall that never gets built. Fundamental market forces are at play.”

A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving a renewables revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal. 

By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates. So if the Trump administration cut off the funding for heat pumps that the IRA provides, states could pick up the slack. 

Local utilities are also finding novel ways to use heat pumps. Over in Massachusetts, for example, the utility Eversource Energy is experimenting with “networked geothermal,” in which the homes within a given neighborhood tap into water pumped from underground. Heat pumps use that water to heat or cool a space, which is vastly more efficient than burning natural gas. Eversource and two dozen other utilities, representing about half of the country’s natural gas customers, have formed a coalition to deploy more networked geothermal systems.

Beyond being more efficient, green tech is simply cheaper to adopt. Consider Texas, which long ago divorced its electrical grid from the national grid so it could skirt federal regulation. The Lone Star State is the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, but it gets 40 percent of its total energy from carbon-free sources. “Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too.

State regulators are also pressuring utilities to slash emissions, further driving the adoption of wind and solar power. As part of California’s goal of decarbonizing its power by 2045, the state increased battery storage by 757 percent between 2019 and 2023. Even electric cars and electric school buses can provide backup power for the grid. That allows utilities to load up on bountiful solar energy during the day, then drain those batteries at night — essential for weaning off fossil fuel power plants. Trump could slap tariffs on imported solar panels and thereby increase their price, but that would likely boost domestic manufacturing of those panels, helping the fledgling photovoltaic manufacturing industry in red states like Georgia and Texas.

The irony of Biden’s signature climate bill is states that overwhelmingly support Trump are some of the largest recipients of its funding. That means tampering with the IRA could land a Trump administration in political peril even with Republican control of the Senate, if not Congress. In addition to providing incentives to households (last year alone, 3.4 million American families claimed more than $8 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements), the legislation has so far resulted in $150 billion of new investment in the green economy since it was passed in 2022, boosting the manufacturing of technologies like batteries and solar panels. According to Atlas Public Policy, a research group, that could eventually create 160,000 jobs. “Something like 66 percent of all of the spending in the IRA has gone to red states,” Hausfather said. “There certainly is a contingency in the Republican party now that’s going to support keeping some of those subsidies around.”

Before Biden’s climate legislation passed, much more progress was happening at a state and local level. New York, for instance, set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 40 percent by 2030, and 85 percent by 2050. Colorado, too, is aiming to slash emissions by at least 90 percent by 2050. The automaker Stellantis has signed an agreement with the state of California promising to meet the state’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate even if a judicial or federal action overturns it. It then sells those same cars in other states. 

“State governments are going to be the clearest counterbalance to the direction that Donald Trump will take the country on environmental policy,” said Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at the University of California, San Diego. “California and the states that ally with it are going to try to adhere to tighter standards if the Trump administration lowers national standards.”

[Note: One of the obscure but great things about how emissions regulations/markets work in the US is that automakers generally all follow California's emissions standards, and those standards are substantially higher than federal standards. Source]

Last week, 62 percent of Washington state voters soundly rejected a ballot initiative seeking to repeal a landmark law that raised funds to fight climate change. “Donald Trump’s going to learn something that our opponents in our initiative battle learned: Once people have a benefit, you can’t take it away,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a press call Friday. “He is going to lose in his efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, because governors, mayors of both parties, are going to say, ‘This belongs to me, and you’re not going to get your grubby hands on it.’”

Even without federal funding, states regularly embark on their own large-scale projects to adapt to climate change. California voters, for instance, just overwhelmingly approved a $10 billion bond to fund water, climate, and wildfire prevention projects. “That will be an example,” said Saharnaz Mirzazad, executive director of the U.S. branch of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. “You can use that on a state level or local level to have [more of] these types of bonds. You can help build some infrastructure that is more resilient.”

Urban areas, too, have been major drivers of climate action: In 2021, 130 U.S. cities signed a U.N.-backed pledge to accelerate their decarbonization. “Having an unsupportive federal government, to say the least, will be not helpful,” said David Miller, managing director at the Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy at C40, a global network of mayors fighting climate change. “It doesn’t mean at all that climate action will stop. It won’t, and we’ve already seen that twice in recent U.S. history, when Republican administrations pulled out of international agreements. Cities step to the fore.”

And not in isolation, because mayors talk: Cities share information about how to write legislation, such as laws that reduce carbon emissions in buildings and ensure that new developments are connected to public transportation. They transform their food systems to grow more crops locally, providing jobs and reducing emissions associated with shipping produce from afar. “If anything,” Miller said, “having to push against an administration, like that we imagine is coming, will redouble the efforts to push at the local level.” 

Federal funding — like how the U.S. Forest Service has been handing out $1.5 billion for planting trees in urban areas, made possible by the IRA — might dry up for many local projects, but city governments, community groups, and philanthropies will still be there. “You picture a web, and we’re taking scissors or a machete or something, and chopping one part of that web out,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes climate solutions. “There’s this resilience of having all these layers of partners.”

All told, climate progress has been unfolding on so many fronts for so many years — often without enough support from the federal government — that it will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. “This too shall pass, and hopefully we will be in a more favorable policy environment in four years,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to keep trying to make clean energy cheap and hope that it wins on its merits.”"

-via Grist, November 11, 2024. A timely reminder.

[1-2-3-4-4498-0]

The Grid Scale Stationary Battery Storage Market is a dynamic and evolving sector within the broader energy storage landscape. Grid-scale battery storage systems play a critical role in enhancing the reliability and efficiency of electricity grids by storing excess energy during periods of low demand and releasing it during peak demand hours.

[sonali2345]

Batteries for a Greener Tomorrow: Top 10 Grid Scale Innovations Revealed" 

The market for grid-scale stationary batteries is poised for rapid growth in the coming years, driven by the increasing need for reliable energy storage solutions. These stationary energy storage devices play a crucial role in storing and discharging energy when required, consisting of an array of batteries, an electronic control system, an inverter, and a thermal management system. The stored electrical energy is released back into the grid during periods of high demand or when electricity costs are elevated, making grid-scale energy storage integral for ancillary market services, power quality management, and successful integration of renewable energy sources. 

Request The Sample PDF Of This Report : https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-toc-and-sample/16149  

COVID-19 Impact Analysis 

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the grid-scale stationary battery storage market, leading to a decline in demand. Lockdown restrictions disrupted the supply chain, causing material shortages and labor shortages, thereby hindering production activities. Industries were forced to shut down, resulting in a contraction of the market. Economic slumps and the absence of new investments further compounded the challenges faced by the grid-scale stationary battery storage sector. Raw material shortages, particularly from China, affected the market adversely, and the decline in industrial energy demand contributed to reduced demand for battery storage. 

As lockdown restrictions are lifted and energy demand rebounds, the market for grid-scale stationary battery storage is expected to recover. 

Top Impacting Factors 

The global grid-scale stationary battery storage market has witnessed significant growth due to an increased emphasis on grid stability, supply security, and electrification in rural areas. The Asia-Pacific region, particularly in countries like India and China, has seen substantial expansion in response to growing power generation capacity and the demand for reliable power. The market is also influenced by the development of auxiliary stationary battery storage systems and technologies. However, the lead-acid battery market faces challenges due to the rise in demand for more compact and high-energy density storage units. 

Get a Customized Research Report @ : https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/16149  

Government initiatives worldwide to reduce carbon emissions are expected to drive the installation of stationary battery storage systems. The market will benefit from the shift toward renewable energy sources and the replacement of traditional diesel gensets. Opportunities for growth lie in measures to reduce carbon emissions, improve renewable energy infrastructure, and ensure sustainable development. 

Market Trends 

In 2020, BASF and NGK Insulator Ltd. collaborated to develop next-generation sodium-sulfur batteries, aiming to combine chemistry expertise with battery design and manufacturing capabilities. 

Growing concerns about energy security and continuous improvements in energy efficiency are boosting the market share of grid-scale stationary battery storage in Europe. BYD introduced battery boxes designed to provide emergency power in accordance with European requirements. 

Fluence and Northvolt are partnering to create next-generation battery systems, focusing on lowering total cost of ownership and enhancing technology critical for stable, resilient, and decarbonized electric grids. 

Enquiry Before Buying : https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/16149  

Key Benefits of the Report 

Analytical depiction of the grid-scale stationary battery storage market, current trends, and future estimations. 

Information on key drivers, restraints, and opportunities with a detailed analysis of market share. 

Quantitative analysis highlighting market growth scenarios. 

Porter’s five forces analysis illustrating buyer and supplier potency. 

Detailed market analysis based on competitive intensity and future competition trends. 

Grid-Scale Stationary Battery Storage Market Report Highlights 

By Grid Service 

Frequency Regulation 

Flexible Ramping 

Black Start Services 

Energy Shifting and Capacity Deferral 

Transmission and Distribution Congestion Relief 

Capacity Firming 

Reduced RE Curtailment 

Reduced Reliance on Diesel Gensets 

By Battery Type 

Lithium-Ion 

Sodium-Sulfur 

Lead Acid 

Flow Battery 

Key Market Players 

Johnson Control 

Tesla 

Hitachi Chemical Co. Ltd. 

Furukawa Battery Co., Ltd. 

Uniper 

Samsung 

SDI 

Panasonic Corporation 

Exide Technologies 

Durapower 

GS Yuasa Corporation 

NGK Insulator 

LG Chem 

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

From Europe to North America, an energy revolution is breathing new life into empty, long-forgotten coal mine shafts — by repurposing them into places to store renewable energy. Using “gravity batteries,” these underground facilities aim to tackle one of renewable energy’s greatest challenges: storage. The method is simple: Excess renewable energy is used to power winches that lift heavy weights — such as containers filled with sand or rock — up the mine shaft. When additional energy is needed, these weights are released, generating power as they descend. This approach not only gives these disused mines a second life but also offers economic and environmental benefits to communities once reliant on coal. Hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines — about 550,000 in the U.S. alone — pose economic, environmental and safety risks. In some areas, these old shafts have caused collapses or polluted groundwater, while in others, the loss of mining jobs has hit local economies hard. Meanwhile, as renewable energy scales up, storage limitations become a pressing issue, especially with solar and wind, which are naturally intermittent. This year, solar is expected to surpass coal as a leading global power source, according to the International Energy Agency, highlighting the need for reliable storage to balance supply and demand. During the U.K.’s 2020 lockdown, for example, National Grid warned of potential blackouts when energy demand dropped by 20 percent, leading to excess renewable power that went unused.

Gravity batteries offer a straightforward but powerful — and cost-effective — way to address both of these problems at once. Their potential is already being realized. In Rudong, near Shanghai, the first commercial grid-scale gravity battery was connected to the grid in December 2023. Capable of storing up to 100 megawatt hours of energy, it can power nine homes for an entire year using only stored electricity. Across China, nine additional projects are in development, while in Switzerland, a commercial demonstration unit has been connected to the national grid for testing since 2019, showcasing the technology’s promise on a global scale. And now, other countries, from Finland to Australia, are getting on board.

[tanadrin]

It seemed like a few years ago people were talking about grid-scale battery storage in very uncertain terms--like, this was an idea that was out there, that people were definitely working towards, but other people thought it was very dubious, and we should be pursuing alternative energy storage avenues instead, or only building nuclear, because battery tech would never get there.

But sometime in the intervening years, this seems to be a problem that was just... solved? Or at least we made sufficient progress on it that it's gone from "thing that might be possible in the future" to "thing that is definitely possible if we keep investing in it." And I think a lot of climate stuff has been like that recently, where if you're not deep in the weeds of the latest developments in climate policy and technology, you can really miss that some big changes are happening for the better.

(And, in the American context, it's hard to miss that a lot of these changes have happened because of programs implemented under the current administration: the federal government has been supporting huge expansions of wind and solar power, in a way that 100% reflects partisan priorities on climate issues, and it seems obvious to me that another four years of Biden in office would be extremely good for environmental issues in the United States, and in the world at large, and four years of any Republican president would be pretty bad in comparison.)

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - June 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. This LGBTQ+ nonprofit just raised $285M to challenge legislative attacks on queer lives

“Launched three years ago in anticipation of escalating federal attacks, the campaign surpassed its goal by more than $100 million. […] Lambda is using the funds to expand its legal team by 42 percent [… and] support a significant scale-up of its public education programs and its LGBTQ+ legal help desk — the only one in the country staffed by attorneys.”

2. When a fox says ‘help’ in London, there’s often an ambulance on its way

“[The Fox Project has] grown from providing information on deterring foxes to rescuing 1,400 a year, including 400 cubs[…. They respond] to calls about injured or ill foxes or cubs that have lost their mothers. […] Cubs that recover are socialized in packs of five until they mature and are then released in a rural location while the adults are freed in the neighborhoods where they were found.”

3. Bills That Could Have Hurt Renewable Energy Die in Texas Legislature

“Renewables diversify the state’s grid and add capacity, renewable advocates said, making the grid more reliable. […] The answer was not to force fossil fuel purchases or connections [as these bills would have done], they said, but to look for more ways to bolster battery storage efforts. […] The Advanced Power Alliance, an advocacy group for clean energy, argued [another] bill would hurt development and competition, which conservative lawmakers should support.”

4. 'New pathway' to cure for HIV discovered using tech from COVID-19 vaccine

“Researchers have taken a giant leap in the search for an HIV cure by discovering a way to identify the virus even as it is camouflaged among other cells. […] By introducing mRNA to white blood cells, [this technology] can force the cells to reveal the virus[…], isolating the virus for potential treatment. [… I]n terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing [with this technology….]”

5. A Historic Milestone in Conservation: The Forêt Brière Is Now Protected

“Thanks to a tremendous collective effort and the generosity of our donors, the goal of raising over $1,000,000 in private funds has been reached, meaning this exceptional 540-hectare property in the heart of the Northern Green Mountains will be protected in perpetuity. […] The area is home to remarkable biodiversity, with over 250 species of flora and numerous at-risk species of fauna[, … and t]he area's habitats are extremely diverse.”

June 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The U.S. power grid added more capacity from solar energy in 2024 than from any other source in a single year in more than two decades, according to a new industry report released on Tuesday.

The data was released a day after the new U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, strongly criticized solar and wind energy on two fronts. He said on Monday at the start of CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual energy conference in Houston, that they couldn’t meet the growing electricity needs of the world and that their use was driving up energy costs.

The report, produced by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, said about 50 gigawatts of new solar generation capacity was added last year, far more than any other source of electricity.

Mr. Wright and President Trump have been strongly critical of renewable energy, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. championed as a way to address climate change. The energy secretary, Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress have pledged to undo many of Mr. Biden’s climate and energy policies.

“Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there is simply no physical way wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas,” said Mr. Wright, who was previously chief executive of an oil and gas production company.

Yet solar energy and battery storage systems appear to have significant momentum and may not be easily thwarted. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, which is part of Mr. Wright’s department, said last month that it expected solar and batteries to continue leading new capacity installations on U.S. electric grids this year.

Proponents of clean energy celebrated the milestone for solar power as the world moves to increase electricity production to meet the needs of energy-hungry data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense

This is the LAST DAY to get my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating.

Silicon Valley claims to be the epicenter of American innovation, but what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley is some combination of nonsense, climate-wrecking tech, and climate-wrecking nonsense tech. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher's lament about "the best minds of my generation thinking about how to make people click ads." Today's best-paid, best-trained technologists are enlisted to making boobytrapped IoT gadgets:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Planet-destroying cryptocurrency scams:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

NFT frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/crypto-copyright-%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%92%a9/

Or planet-destroying AI frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

If that was the best "innovation" the human race had to offer, we'd be fucking doomed.

But – as Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect – there's a far more dynamic, consequential, useful and exciting innovation revolution underway, thanks to muscular public spending on climate tech:

https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/

The green energy revolution – funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act – is accomplishing amazing feats, which are barely registering amid the clamor of AI nonsense and other hype. I did an interview a while ago about my climate novel The Lost Cause and the interviewer wanted to know what role AI would play in resolving the climate emergency. I was momentarily speechless, then I said, "Well, I guess maybe all the energy used to train and operate models could make it much worse? What role do you think it could play?" The interviewer had no answer.

Here's brief tour of the revolution:

2023 saw 32GW of new solar energy come online in the USA (up 50% from 2022);

Wind increased from 118GW to 141GW;

Grid-scale batteries doubled in 2023 and will double again in 2024;

EV sales increased from 20,000 to 90,000/month.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/12/19/building-a-thriving-clean-energy-economy-in-2023-and-beyond/

The cost of clean energy is plummeting, and that's triggering other areas of innovation, like using "hot rocks" to replace fossil fuel heat (25% of overall US energy consumption):

https://rondo.com/products

Increasing our access to cheap, clean energy will require a lot of materials, and material production is very carbon intensive. Luckily, the existing supply of cheap, clean energy is fueling "green steel" production experiments:

https://www.wdam.com/2024/03/25/americas-1st-green-steel-plant-coming-perry-county-1b-federal-investment/

Cheap, clean energy also makes it possible to recover valuable minerals from aluminum production tailings, a process that doubles as site-remediation:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/toxic-red-mud-co2-free-iron

And while all this electrification is going to require grid upgrades, there's lots we can do with our existing grid, like power-line automation that increases capacity by 40%:

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/13/1187620367/power-grid-enhancing-technologies-climate-change

It's also going to require a lot of storage, which is why it's so exciting that we're figuring out how to turn decommissioned mines into giant batteries. During the day, excess renewable energy is channeled into raising rock-laden platforms to the top of the mine-shafts, and at night, these unspool, releasing energy that's fed into the high-availability power-lines that are already present at every mine-site:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Why are we paying so much attention to Silicon Valley pump-and-dumps and ignoring all this incredible, potentially planet-saving, real innovation? Cooper cites a plausible explanation from the Apperceptive newsletter:

https://buttondown.email/apperceptive/archive/destructive-investing-and-the-siren-song-of/

Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It's run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That's why AI is so exciting for Silicon Valley types: it lets them fantasize about making humans obsolete. A company without employees is a company without labor issues, without messy co-determination fights, without any moral consideration for others. It's the natural progression for an industry that started by misclassifying the workers in its buildings as "contractors," and then graduated to pretending that millions of workers were actually "independent small businesses."

It's also the natural next step for an industry that hates workers so much that it will pretend that their work is being done by robots, and then outsource the labor itself to distant Indian call-centers (no wonder Indian techies joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

Contrast this with climate tech: this is a profoundly physical kind of technology. It is labor intensive. It is skilled. The workers who perform it have power, both because they are so far from their employers' direct oversight and because these fed-funded sectors are more likely to be unionized than Silicon Valley shops. Moreover, climate tech is capital intensive. All of those workers are out there moving stuff around: solar panels, wires, batteries.

Climate tech is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra writes in her must-read 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure is a gift we give to our descendants. Infrastructure projects rarely pay for themselves during the lives of the people who decide to build them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Climate tech also produces gigantic, diffused, uncapturable benefits. The "social cost of carbon" is a measure that seeks to capture how much we all pay as polluters despoil our shared world. It includes the direct health impacts of burning fossil fuels, and the indirect costs of wildfires and extreme weather events. The "social savings" of climate tech are massive:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

For every MWh of renewable power produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs. That's $100 worth of people not sickening and dying from pollution, $100 worth of homes and habitats not burning down or disappearing under floodwaters. All told, US renewables have delivered $250,000,000,000 (one quarter of one trillion dollars) in social carbon savings over the past four years:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

In other words, climate tech is unselfish tech. It's a gift to the future and to the broad public. It shares its spoils with workers. It requires public action. By contrast, Silicon Valley is greedy tech that is relentlessly focused on the shortest-term returns that can be extracted with the least share going to labor. It also requires massive public investment, but it also totally committed to giving as little back to the public as is possible.

No wonder America's richest and most powerful people are lining up to endorse and fund Trump:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-30-democracy-deshmocracy-mega-financiers-flocking-to-trump/

Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer's motto that "the purpose of a system is what it does." If Silicon Valley produces nothing but planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams, then these are all features of the tech sector, not bugs.

As Anil Dash writes:

Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/29/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/

To give climate tech the attention, excitement, and political will it deserves, we need to recalibrate our understanding of the world. We need to have object permanence. We need to remember just how few people were actually using cryptocurrency during the bubble and apply that understanding to AI hype. Only 2% of Britons surveyed in a recent study use AI tools:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

If we want our tech companies to do good, we have to understand that their ground state is to create planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams. We need to make these companies small enough to fail, small enough to jail, and small enough to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

We need to hold companies responsible, and we need to change the microeconomics of the board room, to make it easier for tech workers who want to do good to shout down the scammers, nonsense-peddlers and grifters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally liable for the decision to trick people into signing up for Prime, and for making the unsubscribe-from-Prime process into a Kafka-as-a-service nightmare:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/

Imagine how powerful a precedent this could set. The Amazon employees who vociferously objected to their bosses' decision to make Prime as confusing as possible could have raised the objection that doing this could end up personally costing those bosses millions of dollars in fines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

We need to make climate tech, not Big Tech, the center of our scrutiny and will. The climate emergency is so terrifying as to be nearly unponderable. Science fiction writers are increasingly being called upon to try to frame this incomprehensible risk in human terms. SF writer (and biologist) Peter Watts's conversation with evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks is an eye-opener:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

They draw a distinction between "sustainability" meaning "what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?" and sustainability meaning, "what changes in behavior will allow us to save ourselves with the technology that is possible?"

Writing about the Watts/Brooks dialog for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith invokes William Gibson's The Peripheral:

With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself become a slaughterhouse, science had started popping. Not all at once, no one big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before…. Ways to print food that required much less in the way of actual food to begin with. So everything, however deeply fucked in general, was lit increasingly by the new, by things that made people blink and sit up, but then the rest of it would just go on, deeper into the ditch. A progress accompanied by constant violence, he said, by sufferings unimaginable.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html

Gibson doesn't think this is likely, mind, and even if it's attainable, it will come amidst "unimaginable suffering."

But the universe of possible technologies is quite large. As Chachra points out in How Infrastructure Works, we could give every person on Earth a Canadian's energy budget (like an American's, but colder), by capturing a mere 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface every day. Doing this will require heroic amounts of material and labor, especially if we're going to do it without destroying the planet through material extraction and manufacturing.

These are the questions that we should be concerning ourselves with: what behavioral changes will allow us to realize cheap, abundant, green energy? What "innovations" will our society need to focus on the things we need, rather than the scams and nonsense that creates Silicon Valley fortunes?

How can we use planning, and solidarity, and codetermination to usher in the kind of tech that makes it possible for us to get through the climate bottleneck with as little death and destruction as possible? How can we use enforcement, discernment, and labor rights to thwart the enshittificatory impulses of Silicon Valley's biggest assholes?

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

[mindblowingscience]

The “white gold” of clean energy, lithium is a key ingredient in batteries large and small, from those powering phones and laptops to grid-scale energy storage systems. Though relatively abundant, the silvery-white metal could soon be in short supply due to a complex sourcing landscape affected by the electric vehicle (EV) boom, net-zero goals, and geopolitical factors. Valued at over $65 billion in 2023, the lithium-ion battery (LIB) global market is expected to grow by over 23% in the next eight years, likely heightening existing challenges in lithium supply.

Continue Reading.

[reasonsforhope]

Green energy is in its heyday. 

Renewable energy sources now account for 22% of the nation’s electricity, and solar has skyrocketed eight times over in the last decade. This spring in California, wind, water, and solar power energy sources exceeded expectations, accounting for an average of 61.5 percent of the state's electricity demand across 52 days. 

But green energy has a lithium problem. Lithium batteries control more than 90% of the global grid battery storage market. 

That’s not just cell phones, laptops, electric toothbrushes, and tools. Scooters, e-bikes, hybrids, and electric vehicles all rely on rechargeable lithium batteries to get going. 

Fortunately, this past week, Natron Energy launched its first-ever commercial-scale production of sodium-ion batteries in the U.S. 

“Sodium-ion batteries offer a unique alternative to lithium-ion, with higher power, faster recharge, longer lifecycle and a completely safe and stable chemistry,” said Colin Wessells — Natron Founder and Co-CEO — at the kick-off event in Michigan. 

The new sodium-ion batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, with an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.

Wessells said that using sodium as a primary mineral alternative eliminates industry-wide issues of worker negligence, geopolitical disruption, and the “questionable environmental impacts” inextricably linked to lithium mining. 

“The electrification of our economy is dependent on the development and production of new, innovative energy storage solutions,” Wessells said. 

Why are sodium batteries a better alternative to lithium?

The birth and death cycle of lithium is shadowed in environmental destruction. The process of extracting lithium pollutes the water, air, and soil, and when it’s eventually discarded, the flammable batteries are prone to bursting into flames and burning out in landfills. 

There’s also a human cost. Lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel are not only harder to source and procure, but their supply chains are also overwhelmingly attributed to hazardous working conditions and child labor law violations. 

Sodium, on the other hand, is estimated to be 1,000 times more abundant in the earth’s crust than lithium. 

“Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt,” engineer Casey Crownhart wrote ​​in the MIT Technology Review. “Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.”

What will these batteries be used for?

Right now, Natron has its focus set on AI models and data storage centers, which consume hefty amounts of energy. In 2023, the MIT Technology Review reported that one AI model can emit more than 626,00 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

“We expect our battery solutions will be used to power the explosive growth in data centers used for Artificial Intelligence,” said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron. 

“With the start of commercial-scale production here in Michigan, we are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient, safe, and reliable battery energy storage.”

The fast-charging energy alternative also has limitless potential on a consumer level, and Natron is eying telecommunications and EV fast-charging once it begins servicing AI data storage centers in June. 

On a larger scale, sodium-ion batteries could radically change the manufacturing and production sectors — from housing energy to lower electricity costs in warehouses, to charging backup stations and powering electric vehicles, trucks, forklifts, and so on. 

“I founded Natron because we saw climate change as the defining problem of our time,” Wessells said. “We believe batteries have a role to play.”

-via GoodGoodGood, May 3, 2024

--

Note: I wanted to make sure this was legit (scientifically and in general), and I'm happy to report that it really is! x, x, x, x

[eightyonekilograms]

My only other electricity market comment for today is that, as great as it is to see grid-scale storage going hockey-stick-shaped, a little part of me is disappointed that it's mostly just chemical batteries. We probably won't get any of those wacky storage ideas like the trains full of rock that go up and down mountains, or the towers that are continuously assembled and disassembled. Oh well.

[cyanophore]

Fuck it, dropping my sona. I have no art for this goober, but I've got a lot of lore about who they are and how they work, which has accumulated over a couple years, so wall of text incoming.

Name is O/LETS-061 (They/Them, Operations/Logistics Engineering and Technical Support, or informally, Ollie/Outlets!), and they're an industrial-model protogen with an integrated fusion reactor.

Kind and timid, relates well to AIs. Can generate frankly absurd quantities of electricity, but has to worry about cooling and radiation exposure. Makes them indispensable in scenarios where electricity is necessary for life support or to keep AIs from shutting down.

Gray-to-white fur, usually covered by an industrial hardsuit. Physically large, with enhanced legs and skeleton to bear the weight of the reactor, which itself looks something like a cylindrical backpack. Long, very thick tail (think Mewtwo) which serves as a primary power conduit for the reactor.

Lots of details under the cut:

Introduction: a kindly, introverted protogen who sees beauty in the purpose, harmony, and artistry of large-scale technological systems. They relate well to artificial minds—or 'spirits'—and enjoy interfacing with them. Their character flaws are timidity and occasional willingness to take the path of least resistance.

O/LETS-061 is an acronym for Operations/Logistics Engineering and Technical Support, followed by their production batch number. Ollie is genderless, and belongs to a product line designed for engineering tasks in an industrial, municipal, or military capacity. To that end, they were born with a wide-scope knowledge base encompassing everything they need to work with a variety of advanced technologies. They are equipped with a cold fusion reactor which can, with sufficient fuel and supplementary cooling systems, supply power to a small city or starship. Generating power does entail some personal risk, typically due to overheating, though it is generally safe if safety limits are observed.

Physical Description: Ollie stands at around 228cm (~7'6") from the tip of their ears to their paws, and weighs just under 190 kilograms (~418 lb.) due to their extensive array of cybernetics, industrial-grade protective gear, integrated tools, and reactor. To accommodate the additional mass, their skeleton has been reinforced and their legs augmented with powered load-bearing systems.

Their fur is gray, and their cybernetics have dark violet plating and lighting. Their visor is black with purple lighting. Eyes convey expression through simple geometric shapes, and their virtual mouth has a simple curved shape with a set of small fangs. In general, they prefer to open their nanite visor and use their organic larynx to speak. On the right side of their visor, they have a single external screen which typically displays reactor temperature and radiation monitoring data, serving to alert people nearby of reactor function.

To integrate with power grids, their tail contains a high-throughput power conduit leading directly out of the reactor, ending in a universal connector. The tail is self-articulated, over a meter long, and about as large around as a human calf at its widest. For a good reference of size and shape, think Mewtwo. Their tail contains layers of insulation and powerful synthmuscle to bear the weight of the cabling inside, and the electrical connector at the end is marked with hazard tape. If necessary, they can use the electrical output and raw strength of their tail to defend themself.

While working, they are usually seen wearing a hardsuit of industrial protective gear incorporating layers of insulation, impact guards, and tool storage options. When off-duty, however, they remove this suit and can detach much of the backpack assembly surrounding their reactor core, including the thermoelectric generator, supplemental heat management components, and fuel storage. This sheds around 60 kilograms of bulky equipment, slimming their profile down sufficiently that they can wear ordinary clothing if they so choose, though the reactor becomes inoperable in this state.

Without the industrial equipment, they have a bulky build. Their fur sometimes gets unkempt from wearing protective gear for long periods; they go through a lot of shampoo and conditioner. They tend to choose utilitarian clothing, but occasionally buy magnets or decals to put on their cybernetics. 

Personality and Background: In contrast to their large, imposing appearance, Ollie is a kind and affable person. In their day-to-day life, they have a small but close circle of friends. They rely on regular, recurring social events to maintain contact with others.

One character flaw they have is tending to think of themself (consciously or not) as a piece of support infrastructure rather than an agent in their own right. They tend to be meek and follow others' lead, dismissing their own ideas on how to proceed even when they might be the expert on a given topic.

In the event of power outages or maintenance requiring primary reactors to be taken offline, units such as Ollie are a vital emergency resource. Many spirits depend on an uninterrupted source of power to survive, as do organics who live in environments where life-support systems are necessary.

When serving in a capacity where others depend on their power production and expertise for survival, Ollie shines. Suddenly, they find themself delegating tasks, triaging problems, and coordinating relief efforts with authority and calm. Even though they might be physically tethered to coolant feeds and power conduits throughout the ordeal, emitting too much radiation for anyone to approach them, O/LETS-061 can become the beating heart of a stricken space colony or starship until the danger passes. They take a lot of pride in this knowledge.

When they aren't working, one activity they enjoy is diving. They own a set of aquatic-style arms and tail with retractable gills, which they can attach to their body as needed. Immersion in water helps Ollie to control excess heat, also providing an instinctual sense of safety and comfort.

They enjoy the alien, bizarre environment of the ocean floor, often taking long-distance hikes across the seabed to explore wrecks, reefs, and other places of interest. Sometimes they will go with friends, but they feel just as comfortable traveling alone. In order to return to the surface, they require a floatation device and compressed air, otherwise they sink like a rock. If that fails, they either have to hike back to shore or call someone to come pull them up with a cargo winch. 

Reactor Function: Ollie's reactor core is integrated directly with their biological and cybernetic systems. It's as much a part of their body as their hands or ears. They do have onboard cooling systems, but there's only so much heat they can shunt away from the reactor, limiting their energy production to a few megawatts when not attached to a larger cooling system.

Rather than fusing helium-3 and tritium, as municipal reactors do, O/LETS-061's reactor makes use of a tritium-deuterium reaction. This requires a much lower temperature to induce a reaction, but generates more radiation.

Given access to adequate fuel supplies and large-scale heat management infrastructure, Ollie's maximum safe output skyrockets to 660-700 megawatts. Operating at that level, they can run systems up to ship drives, manufacturing plants, and so forth. Sustaining this maximal level of output for longer than a day or two, however, can lead to fatigue and slow accumulation of radiation damage in excess of what their body can manage.  

Naturally, there are certain risks associated with the act of lighting off nuclear reactions inside one’s own body. Ollie is designed for this, but there is strain involved. By far, the greatest limitation is heat management. Onboard coolant circulation carries waste heat to retractable radiator fins mounted on their back and thighs, which extend as necessary. Combined with shielding inside their body, this keeps most of the heat away from their biological components, but their internal temperature can reach up to 50° C (122° F) when running at high power.

To combat the problem of their body tissues literally poaching in their own fluids under these conditions, maniples of nanites in their bloodstream work at the microscopic level to prevent (or reverse, where possible) the breakdown of heat-sensitive proteins. In addition, Ollie's chestplate has a number of couplings to attach external coolant hoses. In an overheating emergency, these can be used to inject supercooled liquid into their reactor, an extreme but potentially life-saving measure.

The internal shielding and bloodstream nanites also work to protect them from the vast majority of the reactor's radiation. Thanks to a number of alterations to their genetics and biology, radiation is actually less of a problem than one would expect. Their body is able to repair microscopic damage from radiation exposure which would be irreversible in most organisms, and can do so on an ongoing basis while under heavy exposure. The real threat lies in exposing others to radiation—Ollie is careful to warn bystanders to find protection when taking their reactor to high power settings.

Thanks to their radiation-hardened biology and ability to detect radiation in the environment, Ollie is uniquely suited to handling and safely disposing of fissile material.

...and that's about it! Love my guy. Thank you for reading! :)

[thatsmy-role]

WHY HYDROGEN IS AWESOME

1. No direct CO2 emissions

No carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced when using hydrogen. When it reacts with oxygen, hydrogen generates only electricity, water and heat. And since it does not contain any carbon, no CO2 is created.

This means that by switching from fossil fuels to hydrogen in engines, gas turbines, boilers and fuel cells, the creation of power and heat can be done without direct CO2 emissions. Plant owners can switch to hydrogen technologies like the hydrogen gas turbine from Mitsubishi Power, a power solutions brand of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), by converting to hydrogen co-firing, and soon 100% hydrogen firing.

2. High energy density

Hydrogen combusts quickly and at high temperature. When it is combined with oxygen and ignites, it forms water and releases heat.

As our knowledge of how to safely handle the flammability of hydrogen has developed, this has unlocked hydrogen’s potential as a resource for our long-term energy needs, as cleaner fuels can now be made with hydrogen that are highly efficient.

3. Plentiful and versatile

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is all around us, mainly in the form of water (H2O) and fossil fuels, otherwise known as hydrocarbons. But it is rare to find pure hydrogen in nature as a gas — typical levels are less than one part per million by volume. To make pure hydrogen, therefore, it must be produced either from fossil fuels, biomass or water.

Most of the hydrogen in use today is produced using a thermal process. This utilizes high temperatures to produce steam, which is in turn mixed with hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen. But it is increasingly being made using solar-driven, electrolytic or even biological processes.

4. Storage potential

The amount of energy produced from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power tends to fluctuate because of weather conditions. Combining energy storage solutions with renewables mitigates the intermittent nature of renewable energy production, and hydrogen is a proven provider of effective storage.

Converting renewable energy to hydrogen via electrolysis allows it to be stored and used at a later date, while also stabilizing the energy grid by providing a source of energy “on tap”. Better still, the hydrogen can be stored for long periods without significant losses.

5. An industrial fuel

Hydrogen can also be used as a fuel to power energy-intensive industrial processes, such as metal processing and glass manufacturing. Heavy industry has a challenging decarbonization journey ahead of it, accounting for nearly 40% of the world’s final energy use in 2021.

Hydrogen is likely to be an important tool for replacing fossil fuels in hard-to-abate industry, many processes of which are difficult to be electrified. Initiatives are already underway - steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal is developing industrial-scale production and use of Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) made with 100% hydrogen.

- @hydrogentruck

Hydra, I wouldn't understand this on a normal day. I'm runnin' on two hours of sleep at the minute - I'm convinced this is written in French.