Hydrogen increasingly looks likely to have a role to play in achieving decarbonisation targets worldwide, and investments and innovation are scaling up. But costs remain high and for clean hydrogen to be most effective at integrating high shares of renewable energy, storage is a vital piece of the puzzle, writes Georgina Ainscow, a Senior Patent Attorney at Reddie & Grose, a firm of European and United Kingdom patent, trade mark and design attorneys.

The Canadian federal government is financially supporting the development of a large-scale advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) project capable of providing up to 12 hours of energy storage.

For the US to thrive while achieving its decarbonisation goals, it needs a robust clean energy economy, creating well-paid jobs and a strong trajectory for technical innovation, argues Philip Brennan, CEO of Echogen, an Ohio-based provider of waste-heat recovery systems and electro-thermal energy storage solutions.

Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the national Energy Storage Association (ESA), has been named in the newly appointed senior leadership team at the US Department of Energy (DoE).

The lion’s share of new funding announced this week to help scale-up potentially disruptive technologies by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) of the US government Department of Energy (DOE) will go to battery and smart grid technologies.

Legislation to help the US economy invest in clean energy jobs and support innovation and industry passed the House of Representatives this week – and Energy Storage Association (ESA) CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman applauded the prominent inclusion of energy storage in the bill.

Batteries, hydrogen and other energy storage should be a “key topic of energy policy,” in the EU, Members of European Parliament (MEP) that worked together on formulating a report into the role of storage in a decarbonised, fair and secure energy system have said.

Lithium battery cells will be rolling off a production line at a 16GWh-capacity factory in France in 2023, with manufacturing startup Verkor then planning to scale up to 50GWh “in line with market dynamics”.

While the performance of lithium batteries has increased tremendously, there’s still room for improvement to lower cost, increase sustainability and maximise their impact on decarbonisation, says Marcos Ierides, consultant and materials expert at innovation consultancy Bax & Company.

Accelerator selected the maker of an organic flow battery among a group of “startups with the potential to dramatically alter the future global energy landscape”.