The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development in Croatia issued the Call this week (17 April).

The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development in Croatia has issued a €60 million (US$66 million) Call for Funds which seeks projects for renewables, energy efficiency and energy storage totalling 20MWh.

The Ministry announced the Call this week (17 April) which will provide €100,000 – €2 million per project with a maximum of €4 million per beneficiary.

The goal of the Call is to facilitate the deployment of 20MWh of energy storage and 80MW of renewable energy projects. It is also targeting energy efficiency projects totalling 140,000MWh of energy a year, and has the overall goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 60,000 tonnes annually.

The deadline for submitting proposals in 19 June, 2023, and the Call page indicated that the energy storage technology must be battery-based.

In September 2020, Energy-Storage.news reported on a €20 million grant from the EU to Croatia-based energy storage operator IE-Energy for the firm to deploy projects in the country.

In April, Croatia and its neighbour Slovenia started a trial project looking at how a five-hour duration battery storage system could increase grid flexibility in both countries, in another EU-financed project.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the inaugural Energy Storage Summit Central Eastern Europe on 26-27 September this year. This event will bring together the region’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place, as the region readies itself for storage to take off. Visit the official site for more info.

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Image: European Parliament.

Kadri Simson, the European Commission’s (EC’s) commissioner for energy, has described energy storage as vital for the energy transition, yet often “overlooked” in plans and strategies.

Simson made the remarks yesterday in a speech to open a debate with Members of European Parliament (MEPs) on the role of energy storage in the European electricity system, that the commissioner said was “timely and necessary”.

The commissioner also presented the EC’s latest proposals on energy storage.

While the description of energy storage used included gas reserves and the need to fill them up again ahead of next winter, the debate focused also on European energy security and decarbonisation. Commissioner Simson referred to the need for flexibility resources, which electricity storage using batteries can provide.

“We have a lot of topics on our agenda. But storage is the centrepiece for building a decarbonised, flexible and cost-effective energy system, through electrification and energy system integration,” Simson said.

Storage is also key to achieving the aims of the REPowerEU plan, the Europe Union (EU) strategy to reduce the bloc’s reliance on imported Russian gas and ramp up renewable energy targets, Simson said, including renewable energy and hydrogen development.

“But the fact is that the role of storage is often overlooked,” Simson said.

This last point is certainly true on the evidence of some previous EU pronouncements on energy: for instance, energy storage was left out of early drafts of the REPowerEU plan, as well as from draft proposals for the EU’s Electricity Market Design reforms.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news however, and perhaps due in part to input from the industry and advocates, in both cases, later versions of the plans were revised to feature explicit treatment of energy storage.

Energy storage does however have friends or allies in the EU government: case in point being a 2020 report spearheaded by Austrian MEP Claudia Gamon which proposed putting energy storage and hydrogen at the heart of the energy strategy conversation.

Gamon spoke later in 2020 on the topic, in a webinar hosted by the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) and together with MEPs from three other countries and Dr Tudor Constantinescu, Principal Adviser to the Director-General for Energy in the European Commission.

Simson yesterday noted that the Austrian MEP’s report brought energy storage into focus “and set in motion a systematic work by the Commission”.

“We examined the relevant technologies, the barriers to their deployment to market, the gaps in the regulatory framework,” Simson said.

Commission’s proposals

“Today, I am delighted to present you the results of this work and the latest set of Commission proposals on energy storage,” the commissioner continued.

Electricity Market Design

As regular readers of this site will know, the reform of Europe’s electricity markets and their design has been a hot topic that industry players like Fluence have weighed in on with proposals of their own.

Simson noted that the reforms put provisions to boost “advanced storage and flexibility technologies” at the core of the market framework. Member States and electricity system operators will be required to assess the need for flexibility services in their national energy systems over five-year timeframes.

National objectives for flexibility coming from non-fossil fuel resources would need to be established, while Member States would be allowed to introduce mechanisms to support those non-fossil fuel resources or integrate them into capacity markets.

Meanwhile system operators could procure flexibility services during peak hours of system demand, use smart metering to determine the need for flexibility, and introduce network tariffs to incentivise flexibility.

Commission recommendation on energy storage

The EC published a recommendation document in March that was referred to by one industry source as a “de facto” energy storage strategy for the EU. As Simson said yesterday, the Staff Working Document highlighted the value of energy storage and featured a 10-point plan on how to remove barriers to and maximise energy system participation for storage resources.

Network code

Finally, Simson pointed out that Europe’s association of transmission system operators, ENTSO-E, was requested by the EU in March to begin developing a new network code.

“This will further support the development of demand response, including rules on aggregation, energy storage and demand curtailment, and address remaining regulatory barriers. And it will be an important step towards the use of flexibility services, in particular by system operators,” Simson said.

‘No European energy transition without storage’

“There will be no energy transition without energy storage!” MEP Claudia Gamon tweeted after the debate.

“Almost 3 years after my report on the topic, we finally have two relevant documents from the Commission that will hopefully move things forward. The current debate in the plenary is long overdue,” Gamon said, reinforcing the point that storage has been “carelessly overlooked”.

Gamon said in particular that permitting for large capacity projects needs to happen more quickly, and not be “stalled by bureaucracy,” before thanking commissioner Kadri Simson for “tackling storage with her team,” and “moving forward with changes”.

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Jeffrey Max

Ascent Solar Technologies Inc., a developer of CIGS thin-film photovoltaic solutions, has completed a transaction to acquire the Zurich-based manufacturing assets of thin-film solar manufacturer Flisom AG.

Ascent says it will continue to be headquartered in Thornton, Colo., and commence manufacturing using its new 15 MW roll-to-roll thin-film manufacturing assets in Zurich immediately. Ascent will service production for Flisom’s outstanding contracts using the acquired assets, as well as pursue extending and expanding customer contracts.

The transaction is expected to immediately provide Ascent with the manufacturing capacity to establish new revenue streams in the building-integrated photovoltaics markets. The acquired equipment is capable of roll-to-roll thin-film outputs up to one meter in width and one kilometer in length.

“We are seeing a global push for more solar power production, and we have identified unmet demand for alternatives to traditional rigid panels that can be used in scenarios where land, form factor or weight constraints exist,” says Jeffrey Max, president and CEO of Ascent.

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Abigail Ross Hopper

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says more than 400 companies from across the solar value chain have sent a letter to Congress warning against H.J.Res 39, which would repeal President Joe Biden’s solar tariff moratorium.

President Biden issued an executive action last June to pause new solar tariffs for two years in response to a near-complete shutdown of solar module supply in the U.S. caused by the Auxin Solar tariff investigation. A group of lawmakers are attempting to overturn this action and force American companies to pay more than $1 billion in retroactive duties.

“Congress just passed historic clean energy legislation that is sparking a wave of project deployment and manufacturing investments, but passing this CRA bill will undo much of this progress and have a devastating economic impact in communities across the country,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA.

“The tariff pause provided business certainty that kept solar projects moving forward while providing a bridge for domestic manufacturing to grow,” she adds. “This deeply flawed use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) rips the rug out from underneath American businesses and will cause thousands of workers to lose their livelihoods.”

Analysis from SEIA shows that passing this CRA legislation will eliminate 30,000 American jobs, including 4,000 manufacturing jobs. It will cause the cancellation of 4 GW of solar project deployment in 2023 worth over $4.2 billion in investment. This lost deployment represents 14% of expected solar installations this year and will increase carbon emissions from the power sector by 24 million metric tons.

The letter emphasizes the need to grow domestic manufacturing and reduce reliance on imports but urges lawmakers to not undermine the very legislation that is positioning America as a solar manufacturing powerhouse.

“This misguided resolution would stall America’s clean energy progress and put thousands of construction jobs at risk,” says George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy and chairman of SEIA’s board of directors. “The president’s action to provide business certainty with a pause on tariffs while the supply chain shifts, combined with the historic investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, has enabled solar companies to hire more workers and greenlight projects while the U.S. scales up its manufacturing capacity here at home. Ending the two-year reprieve would effectively halt our momentum and undercut American growth in this industry. We need Congress to stand with solar job creators and reject this dangerous effort.”

“Since the announcement of the two-year pause on solar tariffs and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve seen a huge uptick in the development of American solar manufacturing facilities,” adds Chad Farrell, co-CEO and founder of Encore Renewable Energy. “The administration’s action provided our company with the certainty needed to continue to build solar projects while providing an important bridge for domestic manufacturing to scale.”

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Jagan Mohan Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, pours out concrete to mark the start of construction of a Greenko pumped hydro project. Image: CMO Andhra Pradesh via Twitter.

Corporate funding activity into battery storage companies in the first quarter of 2023 fell considerably year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, according to research from Mercom Capital.  

The group’s latest edition of its quarterly reports into corporate funding, including venture capital (VC) funding and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), found that in Q1 2023, US$2.2 billion was raised across 27 deals.

That’s a drop of 83% from the US$12.9 billion recorded in Q1 2022 from the same number of deals, and a 50% quarter-on-quarter decrease from Q4 2022’s 31 deals, worth US$4.3 billion.

There is however a big caveat to account for. As Mercom pointed out, in Q1 2022, LG Energy Solution floated its US$10.7 billion IPO, which skewed the figures – removing the IPO from the quarterly numbers actually puts the two first quarters on an even footing at US$2.2 billion each.

Nonetheless, looking at previous yearly totals, activity will have to pick up pace quickly this year to catch up to the more than US$26 billion corporate funding recorded for the whole of 2022, which in itself was a massive 50% jump from 2021’s US$17 billion total, and represented more than three times the total of US$8.1 billion reported by Mercom for 2020.

There were decreases in both VC funding and debt and public market funding compared to Q4 2022: there was a 35% drop in VC funding quarter-on-quarter, from US$1.7 billion in 22 deals, to US$1.1 billion in 19 deals. The year-on-year comparison was more favourable, with just an 8% decrease from Q1 2022’s US$1.2 billion VC funding.

While the 83% year-on-year drop sounds dramatic, Q1 2022 was an outlier due to the inclusion of LG Energy Solution’s US$10.7 billion IPO which itself accounted for 83% of that quarter’s total. Image: Solar Media using Mercom Capital data.

It remains to be seen if the sector will go back to attracting funds on the scale it did in 2021, which came after a year of depressed activity during the global pandemic and its related disruptions. Indeed, recent editions of the Mercom report have fairly consistently mentioned record activity, such as Q3 2022, the point at which the previous year’s total corporate funding levels were surpassed.

One area where things appear to have improved in Q1 2023, is the growth in energy storage project funding, as well as the profile of the projects funded. From nine project deals, US$2 billion was raised in Q1 2023, compared to seven deals worth US$749 million in Q4 2022.

Of the top five project deals, Indian developer and independent power producer (IPP) Greenko which offers 24/7 renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) based on pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) paired with solar and wind got the biggest wedge, at US$700 million, while in second place was Blackstone-owned developer Aypa Power’s US$320 million of corporate credit facilities the Canadian company secured for a 15GW+ pipeline of North American BESS projects.

Rounding out the top three were US developer Leeward Renewable Energy’s US$260 million construction financing raised for its Chaparral Springs solar-plus-storage project in California, UK battery storage and e-mobility infrastructure specialist Zenobe Energy’s £235 million (US$252 million) long-term debt facility for two BESS projects, and US$200 million of project financing and development capital secured by Canadian commercial and industrial (C&I) BESS developer Peak Power.

One other trend Mercom identified last time out was a lean towards debt and public market financing, which grew while VC funding declined, as did private equity financing during 2022.

This time, debt and public market financing levels showed a much greater decline than seen in VC funding. Nine deals worth US$2.6 billion were recorded in Q4 2022, which dropped by 57% in dollar terms to US$1.1 billion debt and public market financing across eight deals in Q1 2023.

Year-on-year, that decline was even more pronounced, with a 91% drop from Q1 2022’s US$11.7 billion raised across just five deals, although again the LG IPO will have skewed this.

Recent M&A activity in the sector has been more difficult to track, with all four M&A deals recorded in the space by energy storage companies in the first quarter of this year on undisclosed financial terms. There were also 12 energy storage project M&A deals, of which three disclosed the transaction amount.

Read Energy-Storage.news’ related coverage of Mercom Capital’s quarterly reports here.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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A slide from Modo’s presentation at the Summit showing when it expects the ERCOT market for ancillary services to saturate. Image: Modo Energy.

The massive buildout of battery storage in the ERCOT, Texas market and the risk of market saturation was a huge talking point at Energy Storage Summit USA last month.

Taking place over two days in the capital Austin, the ERCOT market and its soaring battery storage market naturally dominated conversations. There is a little over 2GW online today but that is set to nearly quadruple to just under 8GW by the end of 2023, and the implications of this for revenues is clear according to at least one speaker.

“By next summer, we will have saturation because there’ll be more batteries than there are contracts in ancillary services. This means we in the battery world need to think differently and figure out where the rest of the revenue is going to come from,” said Quentin Draper-Scrimshire, CEO of Modo Energy during a presentation. The UK-based battery analytics firm is expanding its platform to cover the US, starting with ERCOT.

Other delegates and speakers interviewed by Energy-Storage.news at the event gave varying views. Speaking in the context of the firm’s strategy to mitigate against this risk, developer Available Power’s VP business development Alex Krass said:

“And we know that there’s a bit of a timeline on the market for standalone battery storage before it gets saturated, so we’ve focused on it in order to get projects in the ground.”

“The idea is that there are a lot of standalone battery storage projects in the queue, the market will saturate, and ancillary service revenues are going to fall off a cliff for some companies in this market in the next couple of years and make the revenue side a little harder.”

Nick Dazzo, head of trading for Spearmint Energy which only launched last year (when its CEO guest blogged here) and recently acquired a 900MW pipeline in ERCOT, disagreed strongly.

“What that forecast doesn’t seem to do is account for an increase in or a constant need for those services as more renewable resources are added to the system. There’s a tonne more solar coming in the next decade, and once there’s more intermittency in the generation stack, then arguably the need for ancillary services continues. So a static comparison of battery deployment against today’s need for ancillary services doesn’t capture the full picture,” he said.

Ravi Manghani, director of strategy and market analytics for BESS firm LS Energy Solutions, agreed that the market would saturate but only temporarily.

“My personal take on that saturation story is that there will be a saturation point, but I think it’s not an indefinite saturation. I think it’s a saturation for now until we can get to a point where we get to increasing renewable penetration and then the market opens up again, because there are again revenue streams that you can tap into,” he said.

“I think batteries have caught up with all the slack because we didn’t see meaningful amounts of storage being deployed in Texas up until a couple of years back.”

Comparing the development of the ERCOT market with the UK, Draper-Scrimshire pointed out that although revenues per kW have fallen compared with 2021 due to growth in battery storage, top-performing assets could maintain closer to the same levels.

Source: Modo Energy.

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A conveyor belt at a facility from US-based Li-Cycle, which recycles lithium-ion battery packs from a range of sectors. Image: Li-Cycle.

Mining giant Glencore, Spain-based utility Iberdrola and commercial waste management firm FCC are partnering to develop lithium-ion battery circularity solutions, including recycling and second life.

The trio intend to provide lithium-ion battery recycling solutions at scale together in Spain and Portugal, Iberdrola’s main markets and where FCC is also based. They will look to establish a purpose-built facility that could also provide second life repurposing as well as recycling.

The facility will focus on the pre-processing of lithium-ion batteries and battery scrap, sometimes called black mass, to be separated into more refined streams for further downstream refining and recovery of the valuable metals like lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel.

Second life means giving lithium-ion batteries a second use after they can no longer provide the use case they were designed for. Most commonly, this means using electric vehicle (EV) batteries for something other than transportation once they are taken out of a vehicle.

Energy-Storage.news has covered the second life energy storage system (ESS) space extensively.

The trio said they will look to provide lithium-ion battery circularity solutions for both gigafactory scrap and end-of-life batteries. Europe has well over 1TWh of lithium-ion production capacity planned for 2031, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Spain alone has over 100GWh in the pipeline, according to separate figures.

They have already collaborated with the Iberian Energy Storage Research Centre (CIIAE) to assess existing battery recycling capabilities and feed availability in the Iberian region, and are currently assessing potential locations for the facility, which FCC will operate.

The facility will be operated by FCC Ámbito and will focus on the pre-processing of lithium-ion batteries and battery scrap, separating such feed into distinct streams for further downstream refining and recovery of battery metals.

Lithium-ion battery circularity: recycling versus re-use

Companies in the second life ESS space often argue that re-using batteries rather than recycling is a much better way to extract the maximum value from them once they are no longer usable in EVs.

“We believe every piece of battery should be treated at the highest possible level of value, which means looking for any possible way to use it or parts of it as long as possible before it is recycled,” said Gordon Gassmann, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Energy, possibly the largest player in the space, who told Energy-Storage.news in a recent interview.

However, many outside the space say the technology and economics of second life ESS solutions still need to be proven out at scale, while some say the fire safety risk disqualifies them entirely from some use cases like residential.

The US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) head Jigar Shah recently told us that most second life firms are in the beta testing phase, for example. The largest player outside China by announced project size is California-based Element Energy with a 50MWh project and 2.5GWh of modules procured.

The recycling space meanwhile has seen companies scale up much more quickly. The LPO committed to loans of US$2 billion and US$375 million to lithium-ion recycling firms Redwood Materials and Li-Cycle, respectively, in February. Glencore is one of Li-Cycle’s investors.

The European Union this week released the first guidance for its upcoming Battery Passport scheme which hopes to increase circularity and sustainability in the lithium-ion battery market.

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Cape Town at night. South Africa suffers from widespread and frequent grid outages as operator Eskom struggles with reliability. Image: Martie Stewart / Flickr.

A solar-plus-storage project is being planned the capital of South Africa, as the city looks to move “away from Eskom reliance and towards a load-shedding-free Cape Town”, its Mayor said.

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced that the city would design, build and operate a solar PV plant with battery storage to the tune of 1.2 billion Rand (US$65 million). The Paardevlei project near Somerset West will “yield up to 60MW of renewable energy” although the official size of the either portion was not revealed.

A media statement did say that the project would protect the city against one full stage of load shedding from grid operator Eskom. It is part of a 500MW renewable energy procurement from independent power producers (200MW of which will conclude in 2023), the third phase of a broader effort to protect the city from load shedding.

“This project is another critical step in our journey away from Eskom reliance and towards a load-shedding-free Cape Town. We are confident that Cape Town will be the first metro to free our economy from power disruptions, and ensure a green and just energy transition,” Hill-Lewis said.

A feasibility study for the project will now be undertaken, to be completed by the end of the year with commissioning of the project planned for August 2026.

It will be supported financially by the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF) initiative, which offers cities technical and financial assistance in their energy transition. The CFF is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Government of the UK and the Agence Française de Development (AFD).

The City is also launching a demand management scheme which will be awarded in the next few weeks, the Power Heroes Programme, which will incentivise voluntary turning off of of power-intensive devices.

Eskom struggles to maintain grid reliability and resiliency but is also deploying its own renewable and energy storage projects to shore up its network.

Last month, Energy-Storage.news reported on the latest of these, a 513MW/2GWh RFP for battery storage for which bids are due July 5, 2023. That followed on from other tenders including a 343MW/1440MWh procurement last year, on which the first project broke ground in December.

See all coverage of the South African energy storage market here.

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Australian energy minister Chris Bowen (left) on a recent visit to Wallgrove BESS, a 50MW/75MWh project in Western Sydney. Image: Transgrid.

Nearly double the megawatt-hours of large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) were under construction in Australia by the end of 2022 compared to the previous year.

According to national trade association Clean Energy Council’s latest annual report into the country’s clean energy sector, the combined capacity of 19 BESS projects being built last year totalled 1380MW output and 2,004MWh energy capacity.

At the end of 2021, the figures had been 921MW and 1,169MWh respectively. Meanwhile, investment in large-scale wind, solar and storage was at AU$6.2 billion (US$4.17 billion) for 2022, a 17% increase on 2021 figures.

In a foreword to the Clean Energy Australia Report 2023, Clean Energy Council (CEC) chief executive Kane Thornton noted however that overall, clean energy development actually slowed down a little last year over a “stellar” 2021.

That was in part due to supply chain and workforce constraints causing a slowdown in rooftop solar uptake, from 3.3GW added in 2021 to 2.7GW in 2022. The growth did mean however that for the first time ever, rooftop PV comprised more than a quarter of all renewable energy generation in Australia.

The number of new wind projects was down too, from 1.7GW in 2021 to 1.4GW in 2022, but project sizes grew.

The number of new megawatts of large-scale solar also decreased, by quite a significant amount, dropping from 1,683MW in 2021 to 860MW last year. That said, as of the end of last year, 48 large-scale PV projects were in construction across the country versus 42 at the end of 2021, and again, with average project sizes growing larger, CEC said it was confident total generation from utility-scale solar PV will rise in the coming years.

It was a similar dynamic for utility-scale batteries: while at the end of 2021, 30 projects were under construction versus the 19 recorded at the end of last year, the more recently announced projects dwarf the scale of what has gone before.

CEC’s report estimated that around 50,000 residential battery systems were installed during the year, again, a considerable increase on an estimated 34,731 installations in 2021 and broadly in line with a recent market size estimate of 47,100 new systems as reported by solar consultancy Sunwiz a few weeks ago.

Good outlook, but pace of large-scale deployment needs to increase

Thornton said that the figures showed that despite a slowdown in some areas, the energy transition economy in Australia remains strong, particularly as coal power plant retirements accelerate.

Australia’s political direction gives good cause for optimism, the CEC executive said, with the Labor government voted in last year setting a 43% by 2030 emissions reduction target and announcing initiatives like the Rewiring the Nation AU$20 billion grid upgrade scheme and forthcoming tenders for large-scale BESS.

Renewable energy in 2022 accounted for 35.9% of all generation, up from 32.5% in 2021, more than double the 16.9% share it had in 2017 when Australia’s clean energy “boom” began, CEC said. A total 2,257MW of new large-scale renewables were added to the grid during last year, and 500MW of large-scale wind and solar was in construction as of the end of 2022, another record.

Thornton said however that the sustained growth of renewable energy cannot be taken for granted. Even with the “greater policy clarity” the sector now enjoys, reaching the federal government’s targeted 82% renewables in the generation mix will require the pace of large-scale project deployment “to at least double”.

Australia’s national science group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), recently published a roadmap for renewable energy storage which found that a 10-14x increase in energy storage capacity will be needed in the National Electricity Market (NEM) between 2025 and 2030.

View the full Clean Energy Council’s ‘Clean Energy Australia Report 2023’ PDF in full here.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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Commercial rooftop solar installation in Vietnam, which has plenty of solar PV, but very little energy storage. Image: Sungrow

Vietnam’s energy storage sector will be a beneficiary of US$35 million funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and non-profit Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).

The two organisations have partnered to make the funding available to improve energy access and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels in the South and Southeast Asian regions.

As ADB managing director general Woochong Um said as the agreement was announced, two of the bank’s most important priorities are “expanding clean energy for the 350 million people in our region who have either limited or no access to electricity,” as well as catalysing the transition “from coal and other fossil fuels toward clean, affordable, and reliable energy sources”.

Meanwhile GEAPP CEO Simon Harford said that while there is a big opportunity to address those major challenges and decarbonise the region’s energy sector, low and middle-income countries only accounted for 8% of the world’s total energy transition investments in 2021.

That was the lowest share seen in 10 years, and while 2022 was slightly better, with 15% of investments made worldwide seen in low and middle-income nations, it still isn’t enough.

“We need to do better and act bolder, knowing we will only meet critical climate goals through collaboration and meaningful capital commitments,” Harford said.

A formal signing ceremony was held last week in Washington DC, US, to cement the partnership, with the funding to be managed by a new fund set up by GEAPP, an organisation that describes itself as “an alliance of philanthropy, local entrepreneurs, governments, and technology, policy, and financing partners”.

The GEAPP Energy Access and Transition Trust Fund (GEATTF) will assist with energy access and energy transition efforts in five countries: Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

However, two priority programmes mentioned by GEAPP in a release were for supporting battery energy storage system (BESS) development in Vietnam, and supporting the phaseout of coal in Indonesia.

While neither party went into specifics on what those programmes might entail, the partnership will provide technical assistance, grants to partially fund projects and blended concessional finance instruments to mobilise and attract private investment.

Southeast Asia’s energy storage sector is seeing an uptick in investments over the past couple of years, with the Philippines in particular seeing a rapid buildout of battery storage resources. High upfront cost of investment in advanced energy technologies and other barriers such as regulation and bankability issues have at the same time been seen to be holding the region back from faster adoption, which the new partnership seeks to address.

Vietnam has seen a major growth in its installed solar PV capacity the past few years, but successful grid integration of that renewable energy is an unanswered question that energy storage could help answer.

Li-Cycle in Vietnam recycling partnership

In related news, North American lithium battery recycling company Li-Cycle has been signed up as a strategic and preferred recycling partner to Vietnam-based battery and energy storage system manufacturer VinES Energy Solutions (VinES).

VinES is currently building Vietnam’s first lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cell ‘gigafactory’ in a joint venture (JV) with Chinese manufacturer Gotion, as reported by Energy-Storage.news last November as construction began at the 14-hectare site. VinES’ devices will be sold into both electric vehicle (EV) and stationary battery storage markets.

The agreement with Li-Cycle takes effect from 2024. Li-Cycle, which has pursued a strategy of building its recycling facilities close to end-demand centres, locating them on both West and East Coast regions of the US, for example, could also build a facility in Vietnam, the company said.

Until an investment decision is made on that, expected in 2025, VinES materials will be recycled at Li-Cycle’s North American sites. In February the recycling specialist got a loan commitment worth US$375 million from the US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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