Australia’s government-owned green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), has pledged AU$300 million (US$192 million) of existing funding towards “building investor confidence in renewable hydrogen”.

Softbank Group’s SB Energy subsidiary is among investors that contributed to a successful US$30 million Series C funding round for ESS Inc, a US-headquartered manufacturer of iron flow batteries that use a proprietary saltwater electrolyte.

Shell has continued to scale-up its interest in distributed energy by participating in a €60 million (US$70.23 million) investment round by German battery storage firm sonnen.

Sunverge, a California-based provider of distributed energy storage and control systems, has closed a US$15 million funding round that it said would support its expansion.