International forum aims to tap hydropower as clean, green battery

The International Hydropower Association (IHA) and the US Department of Energy have launched a forum that has brought together 11 national governments, including India, and more than 70 organisations from the hydropower industry, financial institutions, academia and NGOs to share their experiences, build best practice and develop policy proposals that can help accelerate pumped storage development.

The forum – International Forum on Pumped Storage Hydropower – was launched on November 3. It has USA, Austria, Brazil, Estonia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Morocco, Norway and Switzerland, as well as international financial institutions, non-profit organisations and leading energy companies such as EDF, GE Renewable Energy, Voith and Hydro Tasmania.

The inaugural meeting of the forum was attended by 200 high-level participants from 40 countries. The forum seeks to develop policy proposals and exchange knowledge on the technical and market reforms necessary to overcome barriers to sustainable pumped storage hydropower projects, known as the ‘world’s water batteries’.

At the meeting, keynote speaker and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged governments and industry to move quickly to develop projects at the scale needed to support the rapid roll-out of variable renewables.

“I believe we urgently need to raise awareness of pumped hydro and its vital role in the clean energy transition. This will require the industry to have a higher profile with the goal of engaging governments and heads of government to make it happen,” he said.

Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is an ideal complement to modern clean energy systems as it can accommodate for the variability and seasonality of fast-growing solar and wind power. It enjoys several distinct advantages over other forms of energy storage due to its long asset life, large storage capacity, low-lifetime cost and reduced dependence on imported raw materials.

Pumped storage hydropower is the world’s largest energy storage technology, accounting for over 94 per cent of installed energy storage capacity. IHA estimates that PSH projects now store at least 9,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity globally.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), pumped storage hydropower is the ‘often-overlooked workhorse’ of system flexibility. To cope with growing demands placed on power grids created by the transition away from fossil fuels and the rapid rise in variable renewables, significant investments are needed, from both the public and private sectors, in the long-duration, low-carbon storage that PSH provides.

Similarly, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates under its ‘Transforming Energy Scenario’ – setting out what is needed to hold the rise in global temperatures to well below 2 degree Celsius (°C) – that global pumped storage hydropower capacity will need to double from nearly 160 GW today to 325 GW over the next 30 years.

Despite being an ideal source of clean energy storage to integrate wind and solar power, worldwide growth in pumped storage hydropower remains slow having been stymied by a lack of policy and financial incentives for new developments.

“We have to get going. [Wind and solar power] can be built in months, but pumped hydro takes several years. Pumped hydro can provide short term storage and load following, as can batteries. But its real comparative advantage is that with sufficient scale in water and elevation it can provide days or even weeks of energy storage,” said Turnbull at the virtual forum meeting.

Although several pumped storage facilities are under development across the United States, India and Australia, global growth has been constrained due to a combination of factors. These include a lack of awareness about the technology’s capabilities, complex permitting arrangements and outdated market and regulatory frameworks which fail to provide appropriate incentives for development.

During the forum, speakers emphasised the need to raise awareness about the benefits of sustainable pumped storage with policy and financial decision-makers globally, and to move quickly to progress new developments, to meet the requirements of the rapidly changing energy mix.

“Pumped storage hydropower is the only renewable option that can currently produce commercially viable balancing power to integrate variable renewable technologies at-scale. The potential for pumped storage appears to be enormous. We have plenty of sites in Africa, Asia, and Latin America…the challenge is in identifying the right sites, connecting them with the grid and using them as best we can in planning for the clean energy transition”, said World Bank’s Global Director of Energy and Extractives Dr Demetrios Papathanasiou.