TU Berlin researchers say early demand for round-the-clock carbon-free electricity could help bring advanced energy technologies to market faster through technology learning effects. Grant funding for the research was provided by Google, which has since announced plans to build the world’s largest iron-air battery.
Early adoption of 24/7 carbon-free energy procurement could quickly cut the cost of new energy generation and storage technologies, according to researchers at TU Berlin and Princeton University, potentially accelerating deployment and making round-the-clock clean power commercially viable.
The research suggests that a virtuous circle of innovation could be activated by a relatively small number of companies and governments committing to 24/7 carbon-free electricity. Learning from accelerated early deployment could have a multiplier effect on cost reductions for emerging technologies.
Corporate carbon accounting frameworks vary widely in quality and approach. Amid growing calls for procurement approaches that better align electricity generation and consumption in time, the most ambitious corporate offtakers globally are aiming for 24/7 clean power procurement, including tech giants such as Google, which provided grant funding for the research. Such commitments could help bridge the “valley of death” – the gap between early investment and commercial viability – for emerging clean energy technologies, as Iegor Riepin, a post-doctoral researcher at TU Berlin, explained.
“When you really want to squeeze the last percent of CO₂ from your portfolio, advanced energy technologies enter the cost-optimal portfolio,” Riepin told pv magazine. One of the co-authors of “24/7 carbon-free electricity matching accelerates adoption of advanced clean energy technologies,” published in Joule, Riepin said that reaching very high carbon-free energy scores of 98% to 100% can add a substantial cost markup in certain locations when relying mainly on mature technologies such as solar, wind, and lithium-ion battery energy storage.
Instead, offtakers making early commitments to 24/7 clean power are incentivized to invest in newer energy generation and storage technologies, providing much-needed revenue and real-world operational data. This could lead to a “virtuous cycle” of investment and technological learning, which Riepin and colleagues have quantified.
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“By taking some technology learning models, we can build a range of how much dollar investment can make 24/7 carbon-free electricity cheaper, making earlier uptake of advanced technologies more affordable,” Riepin said. This dynamic can apply to a range of emerging energy technologies with uncertain learning rates, including long-duration energy storage and advanced geothermal generation.
Round-the-clock clean energy procurement directly reduces emissions, provides learning opportunities for advanced technologies, and in turn helps those technologies become more cost competitive, according to the study in Joule.
For their model, the researchers analyzed how additional deployment experience driven by 24/7 procurement could reduce the cost of two technologies: an Allam-cycle generator with carbon capture and storage (CCS), a proposed type of near-zero-emission power system, and an iron-air battery representing long-duration energy storage.
The mathematical model applies a learning rate for each technology based on the cost reduction that comes from each doubling of cumulative deployment experience. Rates observed in the real world range from near zero for nuclear and hydropower to around 21% for lithium-ion batteries, the study said.
For the Allam generator and iron-air battery, the model revealed that even across a wide range of possible cost outcomes, early deployment driven by 24/7 carbon-free energy commitments could “substantially reduce technology costs.” The researchers found that the multiplier effect of falling costs and increasing experience accelerates to the point where the technologies become cost-competitive options for the wider electricity system.
The study provides an illustrative example of how relatively small 24/7 carbon-free electricity commitments could influence technology deployment. For iron-air batteries, the researchers estimate that commitments equivalent to around 3% of German corporate electricity demand could be sufficient to bring long-duration iron-air battery storage to economic break-even by 2030.
Since the research work was conducted, Google has announced plans to deploy the world’s largest iron-air battery to support a new data center in the United States.
The full paper is available from Joule.
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