4
votes
Do we really need all these long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies to hit the net-zero target?
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- Title
- Energy Storage, But Make It Complicated
- Authors
- Engineering with Rosie
- Duration
- 20:05
- Published
- Dec 24 2025
Comment box
Rosie Barnes discusses long-duration energy storage (LDES) systems to pair with variable renewable generation. She identifies the ones with the most economic potential.
Three takeaways:
Most of the global population and most energy generation occurs in regions that are naturally highly suitable for solar. This means global long-term storage needs are low. The exception is population centers in Northern Europe, but even these places probably won’t need as much LDES as people think.
I agree with Barnes’ hot take that we shouldn’t be directing significant scientific and financial resources toward LDES until we actually need to. It’s more efficient to focus on issues with greater urgency and ROI, like getting solar+wind to 85% of generating capacity to being with. Then LDES becomes more financially prudent to invest in. By that point, shorter-term systems will have improved and may capture market segments from longer-term ones; this means we avoid wasting investing into overbuilt infrastructure.
I recently shared an article about the EU’s grid permitting legislation. Grid operators failing to efficiently process new interconnections is the biggest bottleneck to the energy transition in many places. This can be resolved through legislation. Additional funding for grid upgrades is also necessary.
Barnes didn’t discuss one nascent technology that supersedes storage needs—next-generation geothermal. This is illegal in some places (like the UK) due to outdated regulations, but is safe and effective. It’s also continuous, unlike variable renewables.
In the next 25 years, next-gen geothermal could reach 15% of electricity generation capacity. If solar and wind cover most of the remaining 85%, there’s very little need for energy storage at all. Some will always be necessary, but I would personally say that investing into geothermal is likely to be one of the most cost-effective methods to accelerate the energy transition.
Perhaps solar + battery storage will become so ridiculously cheap that that it isn’t necessary, but I think it’ll have a place.
I'm going to keep my response to this short because it will inevitably just get me worked up again, and I don't want that, but this is entirely true.
The people of the Netherlands have been nudged and prodded and incentivised to invest into solar power, to the point we now have a higher percentage of personal consumer solar panels on rooftops than Spain.
Truthfully, the subsidy of allowing people to write off energy cost from what they generate 1:1 is not a good way to do this (it mostly ended up being rich early adopters to really benefit from this), but that's neither here nor there. The result is that we have plenty of solar.
A result we saw coming for at least a decade. And a result our grid operators have done nothing about to accommodate.
In fact, our energy companies and operators are now forcing consumers to pay them for every kWh generated over a certain level in order not to strain the grid. A grid they should have been preparing to handle this excess load. "Terugleverheffing" they call it.
I recently received a letter asking if I wanted to install an app to see when the grid is/isn't as strained so I could turn on/off my solar panels.
And still, as far as I can tell there are no real plans to solidify the grid to future proof the system.
As they announced the cancellation of the subsidy -and without stopping the grid operators from fleecing customers- the solar panel market instantly cratered. Taking personal responsibility in the energy transition is now punished for the foreseeable future.
The original topic title was super clickbaity, so I replaced it with the first sentence of the video description.
/offtopic