The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like solar and wind is crucial for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. However, renewable energy is intermittent—the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow—making it challenging to maintain a reliable and dispatchable electricity supply. Energy storage solutions that can store excess renewable energy and release it when needed are essential for accelerating the renewable energy transition.

The energy storage market was valued at $73.5b in 2023, with a projected CAGR growth exceeding 15%.

However, current technologies do not provide a complete solution at the massive scale required for the world to become significantly less reliant on fossil fuels and decarbonise our energy. Several energy storage technologies exist, but are significantly limited. The main ones, lithium batteries and pumped storage hydropower, are expensive and degrade over time or specific geographic conditions including water reservoirs producing a large environmental footprint that disrupts ecosystems, respectively (Nature, 2015; Pumped Hydro Australia, 2024).(GlobalData, 2023).

To truly enable a global scale renewable energy transition, we need energy storage solutions that are affordable, efficient, long-lasting, and capable of operating at immense scale over weeks or even months. Gravity-based storage technologies like compressed air and liquid air are emerging as promising approaches that use conventional equipment and geology to store massive amounts of energy cheaply and efficiently. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) involves using renewable electricity to compress air into underground caverns, such as salt formations, creating a reservoir of high-pressure air that can be released on demand to power turbines and generate electricity. When coupled with thermal storage, advanced adiabatic CAES can achieve round-trip efficiencies of 60-70%. CAES plants can last 40-60 years with refurbishments (University of Birmingham, 2017; Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022).

Realising the potential of these technologies is crucial for solving renewable energy's intermittency issues and enabling higher penetration of wind and solar on electric grids. Our client, Cleanergi, is pioneering advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage technology. By using renewable electricity to compress air into underground caverns, the company can store large amounts of energy over long durations and release it on-demand by letting the compressed air power turbines. Cleanergi's solution stands out for its efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ability to provide a full range of grid services beyond just energy storage. Their adiabetic CAES technology-equipped plants can smooth intermittent renewable generation, provide inertia and ancillary services for grid stability, enable black start capability after outages, and integrate seamlessly with the hydrogen economy thus overcoming many of the shortcomings of existing storage approaches: low capital costs, decades-long operating life, and the ability to store TWh levels of energy.