The Rethink Energy Podcast complements the Rethink Energy weekly strategy bulletin, as we dive deeper into the dynamic factors of the energy market. We discuss the week’s key issues, while providing insight into our own research and forecasts to give clearer direction of where momentum is building through the energy transition.
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In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks, we’re joined by Jorg Heinemann, CEO of EnerVenue – whose nickel-hydrogen energy storage batteries promise 30,000-cycle lifespan, enduring draining to zero, partial discharge, and potentially scaling to up to 12 hours of storage duration. So this is a long-duration energy storage battery product with manufacturing now being scaled up but with other points of appeal too, such as being made in the US.
-With DeepSeek and other LLMs achieving reduced energy intensity, data centers in the US can still add easily 40 TWh of power demand per year – under President Trump, some of this will be met by gas plants.
-Batteries have replaced gas plants in the new-build category in the Polish and UK capacity markets – but when will the capacity market be designed around long-duration storage instead?
-Western wind OEMs have posted restored profits and have returned to the pursuit of large-size turbine designs, after a multi-year period of cost pressure.
-DeepSeek and other new AI models promise the same performance for one order of magnitude less power consumption – does this really change forecasts for load on the grid?
-China’s battery exports are up 17.1% year-on-year in December by volume – but the dollar value was stuck at $60 billion for 2024, the same as previous years, as prices decline and volume expands.
-Shandong Province provides some statistics about the interaction between EV ownership, Virtual Power Plant expansion, and EV charging power demand.
-The Trump Administration has quit the Paris Accords as is clearly opposed to wind power. But if the Administration doesn’t support renewables, corporates will, as data centers add ever more load to the grid.
-The solar industry continues to post record manufacturing scale, demand, and low prices simultaneously – with Indian and US reshoring as the only dynamic stories alongside perovskite.
-Comparing the capex costs between China and the West across different energy projects, it’s clear that the bigger the project, the steeper the difference in investment cost – with HVDC lines, nuclear power, and offshore wind the most comparatively expensive in the West.
-Hydrostor has received a $1.76 billion loan guarantee from the Biden Administration for its compressed-air energy storage project in California – how does this technology compare to BESS?
-Australia’s Victoria state is the latest government to slash solar feed-in tariffs, which will force distributed solar development into further battery adoption.
-China alone will manufacture 1.4 TWh of batteries this year, including almost 1 TWh of power batteries.
-Data center power demand will grow to between 6.7% and 12% of total US power demand by 2028, per a new report published by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – growing to fit the grid.
-China’s green hydrogen industry has achieved $1.6 per kilogram green hydrogen, but this still isn’t cheap enough for mass adoption over grey hydrogen.
-Europe’s negative power price periods become ever more frequent, further incentivizing battery developments.
-The global solar industry will install over 500 GW this year, with a final module cost of just $95 per kW as overcapacity continues to mount
-Nexwafe posts 24.4% cell efficiency built on its wafers made via epitaxial deposition – a significantly cheaper alternative for the solar supply chain
-Sodium-ion and vanadium-flow chemistries have continued growth in the energy storage segment despite lithium’s dominance
-China’s export controls will spur further price increases for high-end semiconductor and other materials
-Battery prices set for consistent gradual decline through 2025 and beyond
-More investments into perovskite factories and pilot projects – is low-light performance good enough to conquer cloudy regions?
-China’s perovskite sector keeps announcing new factories – but what’s needed to produce a Minimum Viable Product solar panel using the new semiconductor?
-Germany’s 215 GW solar target for 2030 implies up to $100 billion investment also needed in energy storage batteries on the grid.
-Policy contrast widens on Chinese EV import tariffs between US exclusion, Australian free trade, and EU indecision.