IRENA Released World’s First Report on Energy Storage in China’s Ningde

On November 7, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a lead global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation, released the energy storage report entitled Key Enablers for the Energy Transition: Solar and Storage Preliminary Findings at the 2024 World Energy Storage Conference held in Ningde, east China's Fujian province. 

Approaching the topic from the UAE Consensus, the report explores the methods of scientifically setting national and global targets on energy storage installation, and discusses how to gather key resources such as funds, technology and talent into the energy storage field through policy efforts, for the purposes of speeding up global energy storage installation, and ensuring that the development of global energy storage and renewable energy progresses in tandem to better advance the global energy transition.

The report also underscores the importance of safety for energy storage systems. At present, some energy storage products with inferior quality and insufficient safety design have come to the market owing to lack of safety standards and empirical tests, which is considered as significant impediment to the widespread adoption and utilization of energy storage technologies globally. Therefore, the report calls for developing a safety standard system and validation platform for energy storage, aiming to boost the sustainable development of the industry. 

The report was prepared by members of the newly-established "Energy Storage and Grid Reliability" International Action Group under IRENA, with CATL as the leading contributor. It is the first global energy storage report drawn up with the full participation of Chinese companies. 

"In 2023, the world's newly-added installed capacity for renewable energy generation rose to 473GW, achieving the maximum increase in history. Although it was 54% higher than that in 2022, it still fell short of the 1,043 GW required annually to achieve the UAE Consensus". Raul Alfaro Pelico, director of the IRENA Center for Knowledge, Policy and Finance, said that to achieve the goal of "tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030" set by the UAE Consensus, it is necessary to increase global investment in renewable energy, power grids, flexible resources and energy storage. 

"As a global leader in the industry, CATL is looking forward to carrying out pragmatic and efficient cooperation with partners in photovoltaic and energy storage industries at home and abroad to jointly promote the development of an international and sustainable platform, thus contributing to the high-quality development of the energy storage industry," said Tan Libin, Chief Customer Officer and Co-president of Sales and Market System at CATL.