installations like lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) or traditional pumped hydro. As the world’s energy systems undergo substantial adjustments to meet the changing and increasing demand, energy storage is a critical tool for system operators to ensure flexible, reliable, and affordable energy is available to ratepayers. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2024 World Energy Outlook indicated the world needs to “massively increase its energy storage capacity” in the coming years, indicating energy storage resources will be a “key source of dispatchable capacity globally.” Established energy storage technologies, such as lithium-ion BESS have reached their lowest pricepoint since 2017, dropping to $115 per kilowatt hour (KWh). Scores of emerging storage technologies are transitioning from pilot projects to large-scale deployments, rapidly increasing the diverse array of storage solutions for grid operators. In 2023, the global energy storage market nearly tripled and the energy storage market is expected to grow 15-fold by 2030, with the IEA projecting that energy storage could meet up to 40% of short-term electricity flexibility up to 2050. Canada is experiencing similar fluctuations and increases in energy demand across the country, spurred by a range of factors including ambitious decarbonization goals at the national and provincial levels, significant demand growth, and reduced costs for renewables and energy storage technologies. Our mandate, as an organization, is to support the development of energy storage where it can serve as a solution for the uncertainties and changes Canada’s electricity grids are experiencing. Because energy storage encompasses a wide range of technologies, it’s an incredibly versatile solution that can contribute diverse benefits to the grid. At a basic level energy storage technologies shift energy from a time when it is not needed to a time when it is. Storage can shift energy from second to second to ensure stable electricity flow to sensitive assets or technologies, over the course of minutes, during hours of peak energy demand, or from the day time when renewable energy assets are generating 85 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 04 ENERGY STORAGE CANADA
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