As 2021 comes to a close, we at ESS have much to be grateful for and to celebrate. To be sure, many faced continued hardship this year in ways that extended well beyond the pandemic; in the energy world, extreme weather, wildfires and power outages again disrupted day-to-day life in many communities. But 2021 also brought unprecedented global momentum toward alleviating such events, as well as tremendous progress in ESS’ own ability to help build a sustainable energy future for all.
Our mission at ESS has always been to advance safe, sustainable energy, and after a year of historic climate and clean energy commitments it’s gratifying to see more support for this vision than ever before. The Build Back Better bill, recently passed by the U.S. House, contains the largest climate-related investment package in American history, with more than half a billion dollars proposed to advance the energy transition. The bill includes tax credits that would accelerate U.S. energy storage deployments as well as domestic content provisions to help position American manufacturers as leading suppliers to a growing global market for decades.
From our manufacturing headquarters in Oregon, ESS is proud to be advancing the energy transition both at home and abroad. This year marked the first deliveries of our next-gen iron flow batteries, which occurred under a groundbreaking domestic agreement with SB Energy to provide two gigawatt-hours (GWh) of long-duration storage over the next five years. Another recent ESS shipment will help a California utility minimize impacts from Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events and maintain service to critical facilities including a medical center, a telecommunications hub, and a Cal Fire station.
Internationally, ESS is working with Chilean utility Edelaysen to support renewables growth and minimize diesel generation in the environmentally pristine Patagonia area of Chile. And in Europe, ESS will provide Enel Green Power España with 17 Energy Warehouse™ systems to support solar generation and local resilience in Spain.
This year also saw unprecedented international collaboration on long-duration energy storage, with a global, CEO-led group, the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, announced at COP26 in Glasgow. As a founding member, ESS will work alongside other technology providers, investors and end-users to advance the Council’s mission to accelerate energy system decarbonization and provide expert guidance to governments and grid operators.
The Council’s inaugural report, published in November with analytical support from McKinsey & Company, offers perhaps the most illuminating analysis to date of the role long-duration energy storage can play in achieving global decarbonization targets. By 2040, up to 2.5 terawatts (TW) of long-duration energy storage – 15 times today’s total – will be needed to achieve net-zero grid emissions at lowest overall cost.
Which brings me to perhaps the most exciting news of the year, at least from ESS’ perspective: our listing on the New York Stock Exchange, in October, under the ticker symbol “GWH.” To say this marks an important milestone in our company’s history – and that it provides both Julia Song, our CTO, and me with a deep sense of pride and accomplishment a decade after we founded the company – would be an understatement.
The interest we’ve seen from customers and investors alike shows broad support for ESS’ mission to design and deploy safe, sustainable long-duration energy storage. And the proceeds from our NYSE listing will help us scale operations to meet growing global demand for a product the world needs for a clean energy transition that’s already well underway. Devoting myself to the successful scale-up of our manufacturing operations now consumes most of my waking hours the way developing our technology did 10 years ago.
I am incredibly grateful to the ESS team and proud of all we have accomplished together – both this year and from the very beginning. Thank you to the entire team, and to our investors and customers, for helping ESS continue to catalyze a clean energy future.
Happy New Year and best wishes in 2022!
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