Dec 16, 2021
On December 14, 2021, The Climate Investment Funds (CIF), through its Global Energy Storage Program (GESP), hosted a virtual workshop focused on the transformational potential of energy storage.
The third workshop in a series, ‘Keeping the Power On: Financing Energy Storage Solutions’ hosted over 150 participants from 39 countries and cities across the world. Multilateral development banks, country officials, companies, and organizations investing in energy storage discussed energy storage finance and the relationship between private capital and concessional financing.
Daniel Morris, Clean Energy Lead at CIF, began the meeting, stating that “As different countries in the world really look to transition to a decarbonized future, if we're going to meet the Paris Agreement and our other climate goals, that means we really need to support higher penetration of renewable energy. Which needs to be supported by major increases in the capacity of energy storage.”
Alejandro Moreno, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Power at the US Department of Energy followed up in agreement, further delving into the topic, “If we're serious about decarbonizing in the energy sector, storage has to play a role. But the current project finance approach and treating storage purely as a generation asset isn't necessarily going to get us there; we need to think differently, we need to think transformationally about the system.”
The workshop included two panelist sessions. ‘Energy Storage Financing Opportunities and Barriers’ focused on various aspects of financing energy storage, including steps and roles in the financing cycle and key enabling factors or barriers for energy storage finance. ‘Private Capital Mobilization for Energy Storage and Clean Energy’ looked at how private capital is being deployed for energy storage in developing countries and the opportunities and barriers to it.
One big topic of discussion was the need to rethink and transform energy systems overall. Traditional models utilize centralized assets that are distributed over a network, where traditional project finance is only suited to incremental additions. But what is truly needed is a dynamic system with more intermittent inputs and assets that can handle changes and respond to supply and demand shifts.
Husam Beides, Practice Manager of Energy and Extractives for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank believes that “There is a key need to develop a new market for batteries and other energy storage solutions that are suitable for electricity grids, including a variety of grid and off-grid applications to provide much-needed flexibility to support renewable energy integration as part of the transition to net zero carbon energy systems.”
And Mahua Acharya, Managing Director and CEO of Convergence Energy Services Limited, gave the example that, “One potential path to make battery storage commercially viable is to experiment under the policy framework and architecture to make it possible for a battery asset to be put to functional use for more than one value.”
CIF’s objective with the Global Energy Storage Program is to provide concessional resources that boost storage investments in emerging markets. The workshop gave interested and invested parties a platform where they could discuss the unique aspects of energy storage financing, the enabling factors that could reduce investment risk and what is truly needed for energy storage financing to accelerate the clean energy transition.
Watch the replay:
This event is a component of a new global network and community of practice associated with the CIF’s Global Energy Storage Program (GESP). GESP bridges technology, financing, and policy gaps to develop new storage capacity, accelerate cost reduction, support integration of variable renewable energy into grids, and expand energy access for millions of people in developing countries. The program makes CIF the world’s largest multilateral fund supporting energy storage, building on over $400 million in existing storage support. GESP funding is expected to mobilize an additional $2 billion of public and private investments for these vital technologies.
