TPT September 2020

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

Greater availability of wind and solar energy will be vital to tackle the climate emergency, and storage will be essential to maintain a constant supply. When power use demands the liquid air in the battery will be released back into a gas, powering a turbine that puts the green energy back into the power grid. The battery is expected to enter operations in 2022, storing enough energy to power up to 200,000 homes for five hours. The UK government has supported the project with a £10mn grant. Kwasi Kwarteng, minister of state for business, energy and clean growth, said the new facility will: “Form a key part of our push towards net zero, bringing greater flexibility to Britain’s electricity grid. “Projects like this will help us realise the full value of our renewables, ensuring homes and businesses can still be powered by green energy, even when the sun is not shining and the wind not blowing.” The UK government is under pressure to put clean energy at the forefront of post-pandemic recovery plans. Alex Buckman, an energy storage expert at the Energy Systems Catapult group, said polluting gas power plants remain the principle method of balancing the UK electricity grid, and a net zero- carbon system will need considerably more than the 30 per cent renewable energy available today and, therefore, more storage. “There is likely to be a need for one or more of the medium- to-long duration electricity storage technologies to fill a gap in the market, and liquid air energy storage (LAES) is right up there as an option,” Mr Buckman said. Compared to pumped hydro, gravity storage or large-scale hydrogen production, Mr Buckman added: “The combination of being more developed and more scalable provides LAES with an opportunity to be competitive, if they can prove that they can reduce costs with increased scale.” The Highview battery will store 250MWh of energy, almost double the amount stored by Tesla’s massive chemical battery in South Australia. Overall the project will cost £85mn, of which Highview received an investment of £35mn from Japanese machinery manufacturer, Sumitomo. The plant is expected to be in use for up to 40 years: “It will pass to the next generation,” said Mr Cavada. Highview is developing other sites in the UK, continental Europe and the US, but the Manchester project will be the first. “The first one is definitely the most important, and this is why we really value the UK government’s bold move to use UK technology to solve UK problems, and [then] export the technology globally,” said Mr Cavada.

Industr y Global copper industry facing uncer tainty A report from the International Wrought Copper Council (IWCC) says that the coronavirus outbreak has put pressure on supply and demand for copper and intensified market oversupply. IWCC is expecting to see a surplus of 285,000 tonnes of copper as a result of the pandemic, increasing to 675,000 tonnes in 2021. “These are unprecedented times, and the copper industry is not immune from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the group report said. “The economic disruption and its impact on the copper industry has resulted in greater uncertainty in the factors affecting the supply and demand for copper.” Refined copper demand could reach 22.625 million tonnes in 2020, representing a decline of 5.4 per cent compared to 2019, though demand is expected to increase in 2021; some estimates suggest a 4.4 per cent jump to reach 23.625 million tonnes. Nearly half of all copper is used by the construction industry, but demand from new segments such as electric vehicles is increasing year on year. In analysing each region, the IWCC report suggests North America could see the deepest decline in 2020 with total demand for refined copper down 6.9 per cent to 2.223 million tonnes. A 5.3 per cent recovery is expected in 2021. Europe is forecast to see a decline in refined copper demand of 6.4 per cent during the year, and the forecast for China is demand to be down by 2.8 per cent to 11.87 million tonnes. The International Copper Study Group expects mined cop- per supply to reach 19.65 million tonnes in 2020, a decline of 4 per cent compared to the 20.46 million tonnes achieved in 2019. Refined copper is also forecast to decline to 22.91 million tonnes, compared to 23.47 million tonnes a year earlier. Construction work has begun on the world’s biggest liquid air battery In June work began near Manchester in the UK on the world’s largest liquid air battery, designed to store renewable electricity. The project, being developed by Highview Power, will use surplus green energy to compress air into a liquid for storage. Highview’s chief executive, Javier Cavada, said liquid air batteries can be constructed anywhere, simply because: “Air is everywhere in the world.”

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SEPTEMBER 2020