Q&A: What is ‘long-duration energy storage’ – and why does the UK need it?

Nature & Climate Perspective

**Long-duration energy storage (LDES) accelerates the displacement of fossil-fueled peaker plants, reducing localized pollution and minimizing ecological pressures associated with grid infrastructure expansion. **

• Mitigates renewable curtailment on the grid, maximizing the yield of existing wind and solar installations without requiring additional land conversion that impacts local biodiversity.
• Reduces aggregate greenhouse gas emissions by optimizing clean dispatch, directly supporting global emissions reduction targets and dampening atmospheric warming pressures on fragile ecosystems.
• Requires robust lifecycle assessment frameworks to ensure raw material extraction for novel battery chemistries does not result in adverse LULUCF impacts or watershed degradation.

Market & Policy Outlook

**Scaling LDES infrastructure transforms energy market economics and provides the technological backbone for hourly-matched corporate decarbonization under SBTi frameworks. **

• Incentivizes policy shifts toward market mechanisms that reward 24/7 clean energy matching, moving beyond annual I-RECs to granular, real-time zero-carbon accounting.
• Aligns with ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) by ensuring high-integrity additionality and permanence when quantifying emissions avoidance for grid-connected technological solutions.
• Enables corporate off-takers to reliably eliminate residual Scope 2 emissions and de-risk upstream Scope 3 footprints, bolstering compliance with SBTi net-zero trajectories.