How to store clean generated power in a safe and sustainable way.

[Applause]

thank you

hi this year i went through a personal

energy transition

i went from working at one of the energy

majors to become a founding partner

in a business that brings a sustainable

battery to the market

and i learned how critical energy

storage is

for the success of the energy transition

so i’d like to tell you about it but

more importantly

i hope you will also get involved

ingrid she’s the former ceo

of one of our dutch electricity network

providers

and she calls the energy transition

the rotor for bowing from netherlands

the great dutch renovation

and i like that metaphor because we need

to renovate

both inside our houses but also reinvent

the way we

generate electricity and distribute it

across the country

and don’t worry i will not try and cover

all of the energy transition in this

talk

and i will focus on energy storage

which is one of our renovation projects

that we must get right

to meet our own energy transition

ambitions

so what’s the problem we are used to

centrally built power plants that

generate

electricity where we need it when we

need it

and exactly how much we need so there’s

no need to store electricity

but that’s not how renewables work they

are generated at many different

locations where we have wind turbines or

solar panels

and all these mini power plants generate

electricity when we have sun and wind

unfortunately that’s not always the case

and that’s a problem because we love

energy and we need electricity

for almost everything we do it is the

expectation that by 2050

we will use twice as much electricity as

we use

compared to today with the growing world

population

and the electrification of the way we

live

and we want that electricity to be

sustainable

the dutch climate agreement targets that

already by 2030

70 of our electricity

will come from renewable sources of

energy and that’s great news

but what happens when we add all that

renewable energy

to our current grid

we will have unexpected power outages

and the price of electricity will go up

and down

so we need to solve that problem as part

of our great dutch renovation

the the other day i was browsing through

the

ikea guide and i came across this wisdom

for renovation projects

and it said that for a successful

renovation

you need to have a dream a design

drive and a deadline and you know what

that actually applies to the energy

transition as well

the dream and the deadline are clear

co2 neutral by 2050 70

of our electricity from renewables by

2030. but the design

and the way we’re going to get there the

plan

has not yet landed

and we seem to lack the urgency the

drive to make some really difficult

decisions on time

so energy storage is one of those

and as you said it energy storage is hot

it’s considered one of the missing

pieces of the puzzle in the energy

transition

so let me tell you a little bit more

about batteries storage

and certainly ours because i’m proud of

it

the most used battery today is made from

lithium-ion

and you’re probably aware of some of the

concerns

associated with that battery

it’s made from rare resources that are

mined under poor labor conditions

and requires a lot of water in co2

and you probably know from your cell

phone or your laptop that they don’t

always have a very long life

so the challenge we have is that we want

clean batteries for our clean energy

i do not believe that that we will have

one solution that fits all needs

and so lithium-ion may well continue to

be the best solution for cars

but the world is searching hard to find

alternatives

that are both sustainable and affordable

so hydrogen could be such an alternative

it’s it’s early days but it looks

promising and certainly for long-term

storage

from summers with lots of sun to winters

when we have little of it

or flow batteries like ours

let me check if it’s also there because

i want to show you

so flow batteries

are also built for big storage and so

integrating them for example with solar

and wind

and how do they work well they’re made

actually of two tanks

filled with liquids called an

electrolyte separated by a membrane

and an electric current occurs when ions

travel through that membrane

from one tank to the other and with that

simple mechanism

you can charge or discharge a battery

i find it great to work with scientists

that have actually developed

a real breakthrough technology the

breakthrough solution

in flow battery technology and they’ve

literally taken their ideas from the lab

to

a commercial product and that’s a

process

that’s taken close to 10 years and more

than 100 million dollars in investments

so the main ingredient in our battery is

vanadium

it’s quite an abundant resource

but our producer actually retrieves the

vanadium

from industrial waste from south

and due to the patented special

chemistry of our electrolyte

the battery has unlimited use over more

than 20 years

requires very little maintenance and it

doesn’t get warmer on fire

and it has doesn’t have capacity fade

and once it’s at the end of its useful

life you can recycle all parts

and use the electrolyte to build yet

another battery

so i’m genuinely proud that our battery

is a real sustainable storage solution

oh and if you use it intensely it’s

actually significantly cheaper than

lithium-ion

so you may think now why is she doing a

ted talk and not just selling these

batteries well

we do that too but there’s something

weird going on

because as long as fossil fuel is still

cheaper compared to renewables and as

long as

our renewable energy can always be

handed back to the grid

at a guaranteed price there’s no

economic drive

to invest in storage

so that brings me back to our great

dutch renovation because we need to fix

that problem

because we want to have that 70 percent

of electricity

in the mix by 2030. so

what are the design obstacles that we

need to overcome

where we want to integrate all those

renewables

well the first one is that most

renewable energy is

actually generated in the north of the

country or offshore

but we use most electricity in the

southwest of the country

so lots of electricity in frisland

but our current grid is not built to

transport it to the landstart

nor do we have the possibility to store

it so if we don’t use it

we’ll lose it and then there’s a problem

that we do not always have sun and wind

so most renewable energy is actually

generated during the day

but we use most electricity between six

and ten at night

when we come home plug in our cars start

cooking

laundry watching television

so in tomorrow’s world we need to

collect the electricity the energy when

there’s sun and wind

transport it to the place where we need

it

and store it for when we need it so that

requires

a major investment in our electricity

grid

and in storage well you may think hey

we’ve got 10 years to do that that’s a

long time

but to reinvent our power infrastructure

we really need to start today

but if we wait with our investments

until they are risk-free

or profitable we will have missed our

deadline

and possibly disrupt energy continuity

and i don’t think we can afford

either one of these

so i hope that by now you’re thinking

hey but what is it that i can do to be

prepared

well as consumers and we can all be

smart and efficient

in how we use electricity and we can

start preparing our houses at

that indoor renovation to move from

gas towards electricity

but for companies and municipalities

there are already great opportunities

so take this creative example where we

work with a fantastic co2 neutral beach

club at thursday at western

and they plan to build a carport covered

with solar panels

over a big parking lot store the

electricity

and not just use it themselves but to

create

a sustainable energy community with

their neighbors

it takes entrepreneurs volunteers

experts who volunteer their knowledge

the municipality the province

to collaborate to develop such a plan

but there’s far more to storage than

integrating it with

solar and wind have you thought about

the diesel generator that you need for

backup power

why not replace it with a clean battery

that can even

work both ways and earn you some revenue

or as a nitrogen free solution at your

construction site

or festival location

and all those electrical cars that need

that we need to fast charge at the side

of the road

they need energy storage they need

buffers

to help us all out

and that brings me to drive and we need

a drive for that

that renovation project and um

it takes drive to to change our habits

and to search for innovations

and and i can tell you from working with

with

my colleagues that

research innovation takes lots of drive

it’s not a process that comes with with

guaranteed success

it can be costly take a long time

through try on error

so my colleagues started working on the

first sustainable storage solutions

30 years ago when most of us did not

even realize we had this problem coming

so think about the drive you need to

keep going

for 30 years

but you know what we are super dependent

on these innovators

some 50 percent of the

emission reductions that we need by 2050

will come from technologies that are

just in their infants issues today

so we need to help innovators we need to

foster them

so let’s not turn them into legal or

fiscal campaigners

or subsidy experts there’s no time for

that

and they’re not good at it either

so i know from my personal experience

the policy makers can help and make it

easier for us to

bring innovations into the real society

just think with us in terms of

possibilities

rather than obstacles

economic profits can also be a very

powerful source of drive

and money makes the world go round but

as i i said

before then the market is not yet doing

this

but we have no time to wait for the

market

so what can be done to get to get going

well subsidies and financial guarantees

can help to make early investments in

innovations at attractive

and look what happened to solar and wind

and that works

but even more important than financial

support

are clear and consistent policies

because they provide a road map

to future costs and benefits and that

takes out risk

an entrepreneur we want to know what

technologies or emissions

will be allowed in future so that they

can plan their next round of investments

we need to be able to have trust and

long-term clarity on fiscal treatments

and subsidies take out the risk from the

economics in your project

and we have some great examples the eu

has set aside

a fantastic subsidy to build an entire

sustainable value chain for batteries in

europe

and at the same time they’re changing

the law so they’re also making it

mandatory the batteries within the eu

will be more sustainable so a carrot and

a stick

so the nice side effects of that are

that we are creating

jobs in europe economic growth and we

become more independent

for something as strategic as energy

storage

so we’ve got help at european level

but i’d like to ask for for that as well

at national

and local level as i said there’s little

time

and we really need to get going and

learn

practice how do we store energy at grid

scale

together we are working on a once

in a lifetime renovation project we want

our new reality to be sustainable

we know the outline but there’s still a

lot to be done

and there’s little time so i have two

calls to action

policy makers please help us set the

rules of the game so that we get the

market going

because we need to learn and practice

how we can make the energy transition

work

and to all of us consumers investors

entrepreneurs

there are mind-blowing innovations out

there

i hope you got curious try them

and that your next choice will be a

sustainable one

i got curious about the battery this

year so what are you gonna explore

thank you