Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

54 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 ECTRICITY IN METAL A s the world moves towards adopting renewable energy as its primary energy source, one emerging concern is energy storage. While current batteries, mostly built around lithium-ion technologies, are playing an integral role in the transition, their limitations aren’t sufficient to enable a full-scale transition to renewable energy. The main challenge with current battery technologies is that they fall under the short- duration energy storage (SDES) spectrum, lasting four hours or less per charge. In terms of grid- level energy requirements, they are not a viable replacement for coal and diesel plants. What is a viable replacement is the holy grail of clean energy tech, long-duration energy storage or LDES, which, in theory, should deliver energy for 24 hours to several days on a single charge. Pundits believe such batteries, supplied at scale and affordably, will completely replace fossil- fuel-powered power plants. Leading the charge into this bold future is e-Zinc, a red-hot Canadian startup currently on a fundraising spree that has developed a zinc- based LDES battery solution that might just tip the balance towards full-scale renewable energy adoption. “The late Dr. Xiaoge “Gregory” Zhang, who was a Ph.D. from MIT and Columbia, founded e-Zinc in 2013,” says James Larsen, CEO of e-Zinc. AT A GLANCE e-ZINC WHAT: A visionary company developing electrochemical technology solutions for energy storage WHERE: Based in Toronto, Ontario WEBSITE: https://e-zinc.ca/