This week we spoke to Antora Energy, a thermal battery company which is currently building a world-first thermal energy storage system featuring thermophotovoltaic cells. Antora will buy excess renewable electricity from the grid to store it as heat in graphite blocks. This energy can be converted back to electricity via thermophotovoltaic solar cells, or delivered as process heat – up to 1,500°C or even higher, enough for the steel and cement industries and synthetic fuel production. It is specifically the industrial sector, anything from relatively low temperatures through to the most intensive, which Antora is targeting. “Industry causes 30% of global emissions, with most of that coming from heat provision. Eliminating those emissions is our focus,” an Antora Energy representative…