Central Sardinia is not generally thought of as a hotbed of innovation: arid and rural, some of its road signs riddled with bullet holes created by target-oriented locals, the setting reminiscent of a Clint Eastwood western. However, in Otana, at the site of a former petrochemical plant, a new technology is taking shape that can help the world slow climate change. The key ingredient of this technology is as unlikely as the remote location: carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.
Energy Dome, a start-up based in Milan, has an energy storage demonstration unit that helps address a mismatch in the local electricity market. “In Sardinia during the day, everyone goes to the sea,” said Claudio Spadacini, CEO of Energy Dome. “They don’t use electricity, but there is a large supply,” he added, referring to the Italian island’s abundant sunlight.
Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide held in a giant balloon, the “dome” in the company’s name, as a kind of battery. During the day, electricity from the local grid, some of which is generated by nearby solar cell fields, is used to compress the carbon dioxide into a liquid. At night, the liquid carbon dioxide expands back into gas, which drives a turbine and produces electricity that is sent back to the grid.
Solar and wind power are rapidly growing renewable sources, but they rely on nature’s intermittent schedule to produce electricity. Many researchers and policymakers say that storing such energy until needed, for hours or even days, is key to transitioning economies away from fossil fuels. “Advances in energy storage technologies are critical to achieving a decarbonized electricity grid,” Jennifer M. Granholm, the US energy secretary, said in a statement in 2022, when her department announced it would commit more than $300 million for long-term energy storage. .
Companies are developing and marketing a variety of creative ways to store renewable energy: carbon dioxide liquefaction, iron removal, heating towers filled with sand at temperatures almost hot enough to melt aluminum. But predicting our energy storage needs in the future, after a massive energy transformation, is a daunting prospect, and which of these approaches, if any, will prove effective and profitable is unclear.
“There is a real urgency to decarbonize electricity on a timeline that is much faster than we previously thought,” said Elaine Hart, founding principal with Moment Energy Insights LLC, a consulting firm. clean energy. “We don’t need technologies like long-term energy storage or hydrogen today, but we may need them on a large scale in the next 15 to 20 years, so we’re at a critical time for their development.”
