Our Hills Are About to Become Giant Batteries
A solution to the uphill battle to meet the world’s energy needs
The world is facing a stored energy shortage. According to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to produce 10,000 gigawatt-hours of batteries and other forms of energy storage by 2040 — that’s a 50-fold increase on today’s current output — or risk being unable to capture much of the energy produced by renewable sources. Stored energy is critical during shortages, like those caused by natural disasters.
For over a hundred years, hydroelectric dams provided much of this stored energy — energy captured at one time and stored in the grid to be used at a later point. There are hundreds of thousands of dams worldwide, with over 80,000 in the United States alone. The problem is that most are not used to produce energy, and they cause a whole host of environmental issues: They disrupt river ecosystems, cause mass displacement and flooding when they burst or break, lower oxygen levels in the water, and use a disproportionately large area of land compared to the energy they produce. Furthermore, there are very few suitable locations left to build new ones.
It’s clear that dams can no longer be the solution to our increasing energy demands. RheEnergise, a London-based startup, is proposing an alternative: a…
