Italian startup Energy Dome has announced that they will be launching the world’s first CO2 battery in Sardinia, Italy. The battery makes use of carbon dioxide to store renewable energy on the grid. The company claims that the technology can be quickly deployed anywhere in the world.
Energy Dome brought the CO2 Battery to Sardinia because it is an industrial area with an existing electrical connection. Also, Sardinia presently uses coal, but fossil fuels will be phased out by 2025. The battery can be paired with both wind and solar.
Energy Dome started its work on the battery in February 2020 and has gone from a concept to full testing at multi-megawatt scale in just a course of two years.
Energy Dome’s CO2 Battery facility in Sardinia uses off-the-shelf equipment available from a globally established supply chain and there are no obstacles to its global scalability.
The company has secured multiple commercial agreements, including one with Italian utility A2A for the construction of the first 20 MW-5h facility. The company also signed a nonexclusive license agreement with Ansaldo Energia, a power generation plant and component provider, to build long-duration energy storage projects in Italy, Germany, the Middle East, and Africa.
Energy Dome’s plan is backed by investors that include European deep tech venture capital firm 360 Capital, Barclays, Novum Capital Partners, and Third Derivative.
Spadacini, from the company, explained how it works to Bloomberg in May:
“To charge the battery, we take CO2 at near atmospheric temperature and pressure, and we compress it. The heat that is generated during compression is stored. When we exchange the thermal energy with the atmosphere, the CO2 gas becomes liquid.
To generate and dispatch electricity, the liquid CO2 is heated up and converted back into a gas that powers a turbine, which generates power. The CO2 gas is always contained, and the entire system is sealed.
We don’t use any exotic materials. The technology uses steel, CO2, and water. So, there is no dependency on rare earth materials like cobalt or lithium. This makes our technology geopolitically independent. It can be produced everywhere, and it can be used everywhere.”
