September 22, 2023 – Brooklyn, NY – Today, Ørsted, a leading global clean energy company, and Newlab, a deep tech innovation hub, announced a new partnership to launch the Future Energy Storage Studio, a program that will engage start-ups, industry leaders and other innovation partners to advance early-stage energy storage technologies. The announcement came during Newlab’s New Climate Futures event as part of New York Climate Week.
The mission of the Future Energy Storage Studio is to scale up novel energy storage solutions for longer-duration and larger-scale applications. Ørsted and Newlab’s program will prioritize a broad spectrum of energy storage capabilities, including power-to-power technologies, long duration thermal storage to decarbonize industrial heat, and safe alternative chemistry batteries without lithium-ion. The Future Energy Storage Studio will accelerate a coordinated response across the full technology value chain through innovation, high impact pilots, and accessing public funding in three key avenues: infrastructure, projects, and research. Furthermore, it aims to create investment opportunities for innovative startups.
“Long duration energy storage will be key to scaling the deployment of clean energy while ensuring grid reliability and stability. Ørsted’s vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy and we are using our global clean energy expertise to support the acceleration of larger-scale, and longer-duration energy storage,” said Varun Sivaram, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy, Innovation, Portfolio, Partnerships and M&A at Ørsted. “Open innovation collaboration is crucial for effectively implementing, evaluating, and commercializing future energy storage solutions in real-world scenarios to meet pressing climate challenges. We’re proud to work with Newlab and some very promising entrepreneurs and early-stage technologies, while engaging advanced technology companies and industry players to unlock innovation that has the potential to make an impact on a global scale.”
“Rapid commercialization of new technologies is essential to reinventing energy value chains in order to meet the world’s pressing climate challenges. We believe this can only be achieved with an exceptional degree of cooperation among industry leaders and startups specializing in energy storage technology. We are thrilled to partner with Ørsted to advance these new technologies through real-world testbeds, deployment sites, and dedicated partnerships and we invite other forward-thinking leaders to join us in co-creating innovative solutions,” said Satish Rao, Newlab Chief Product Officer.
With the launch of the Future Energy Storage Studio, Newlab and Ørsted have initially selected five high-performing startups along with a zinc consortium from a pool of over one hundred early-stage energy storage technology providers. The Future Energy Storage Studio is continuously seeking groundbreaking innovations across different chemistries, durations, and forms, including alternative chemistries like sodium, polymer, carbon-oxygen, and metal-air, flow batteries, thermal and mechanical innovations, gravity storage, as well as compressed and liquid air solutions, among others.
The Studio is also proactively expanding our network of industry participants, including power utilities, tech companies, energy-intensive sectors, and cross-sector innovators to provide insights into real-world applications, deployment sites and unique resources, where relevant. Furthermore, enabling partners such as universities, national labs, innovation public agencies and innovation test beds are vital in accelerating the technology maturation. Some initial studio participants include Con Edison, Stony Brook University, New York City Economic Development Corporation, and Energy DELTA Lab.
About Ørsted
A global clean energy leader, Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and land-based wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, and bioenergy plants. Ørsted is the only energy company in the world with a science-based net-zero emissions target as validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.
In the United States, the company has approximately 650 employees and a growing portfolio of clean energy assets and partnerships that includes offshore wind energy, land-based wind energy, solar, storage technologies and e-fuels. A leader across the renewable energy sector in the United States, Ørsted holds the top position in offshore wind energy with approximately 5 gigawatts in development and operates America’s first offshore wind farm, located off the coast of Block Island. Ørsted has a total U.S. land-based capacity of 5 gigawatts across wind, solar, storage technologies and e-fuels. To learn more about the Ørsted U.S. business, visit us.Ørsted.com or follow the company on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@ØrstedUS).
About Newlab
Newlab creates the conditions for world-changing ideas to become real-world solutions. Through its community of startups, applied innovation programming, physical infrastructure, and direct investment, Newlab helps commercialize and scale the critical technologies needed to decarbonize the economy.
Today, Newlab includes more than 900 entrepreneurs, partnerships with forward-thinking corporate and civic entities, and the support of domain experts—all working together to scale frontier technologies. To date, Newlab has supported its 200+ member companies in raising over $2B in capital from 260 venture capital firms, with over $1.5B of successful exits and a collective valuation of over $5B.