Integrated Cryogenic and Thermal Energy Storage for Decarbonizing Energy Consumption: Development and Challenges
Abstract
Global warming promotes a profound transformation from fossil fuel to renewable energy in key sectors such as heat, transport and power. It is reported that there is an absolute increase of ~0.2 % per year in the share of renewable energy in the total final energy consumption in recent years. However, to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 oC, as stated in the Paris Agreement, the renewable energy share needs to be raised from 19 % in 2017 to 65 % by 2050, indicating an annual increase ~7 times larger than it has been.1 With the rapid development of renewable energy, its intermittency nature becomes a rising concern, which not only brings a mismatch between energy supply and demand, but also causes safety issues to the power grid. In this context, energy storage can act as a buffer to compensate the intermittency by storing energy at off-peak times and releasing it at peak times.