Pumped storage |
Key to reliable renewables
Decarbonisation of the global energy system is key to tackling climate change. However, without sufficient long duration energy storage to provide reliability for intermittent renewables such as wind and solar power, the success of the clean energy transition could be at risk.
As the International Forum on Pumped Storage Hydropower highlights, pumped storage has an increasingly important role to play in the years ahead. Suzanne Pritchard reports
Below: Former Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull is a co-chair of the International Forum on Pumped Storage Hydropower
Bottom: United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Mark Carney
“GET USED TO BLACKOUTS or risk reverting to fossil fuels” is the stark warning from the International Forum on Pumped Storage Hydropower. Unless the world scales up investment in water batteries to support the accelerating deployment of solar and wind power, this is the future we will face. The International Forum on Pumped Storage
Hydropower was formed in November 2020. It is a coalition of 13 governments led by the US Department of Energy, the International Hydropower Association with more than 70 multilateral banks, research institutes, NGOs, and public and private companies. Its ambition is to research practical recommendations for governments and markets to address the urgent need for green, long duration energy storage in the clean energy transition. According to the IHA, pumped storage installed capacity is set to more than double in the coming years. However, this still remains well short of the energy storage requirements of electricity grids increasingly reliant on solar and wind power for generation. By the end of 2020, there was 160GW of pumped storage hydropower installed globally, comprising 95 per cent of total installed energy storage. “There is no doubt that that we will deploy wind
and solar power at a huge scale. However, there is an ignored crisis within the crisis,” the pumped storage forum states. “What happens when the sun
10 | November 2021 |
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does not shine, and the wind does not blow? These technologies need a low carbon back-up, or we will fall back on fossil fuels or simply have to get used to blackouts. We need flexible electricity systems to mitigate against these risks.”
Best alternative Former Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull is a
co-chair of the forum. “We understand the red alert we face to address global warming. We understand the consequences of our to-date inadequate responses to it, and the even direr consequences of inadequate action in the future,” he says.
“When we talk about the transition to zero emission
energy systems, we often overlook long duration storage. That’s why this forum is such an important initiative because we have a real problem. On the one hand, variable renewable wind and solar are getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. And that’s fantastic… they are so much cheaper than we ever thought they would be,” Turnbull enthuses. “But while the cost of variable renewable energy is decreasing it still remains variable. It remains intermittent and we have to be able to provide reliability. Without long duration storage you cannot make renewables reliable. “The best alternative,” Turnbull continues, “is pumped storage. It’s an old technology, over 100 years old, but it absolutely works, and it works at large scale.
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