This $2 Billion Water Battery Could Give Green Energy An Astonishing Backup

Global climate change is an increasingly formidable problem that's responsible for the drastic uptick of intense wildfires and hurricanes across the United States, to name just a few runaway environmental disasters exasperated across the planet by excess CO2 levels. Scientists and engineers are trying to solve the global climate crisis in their own unique ways — for example, researchers in Finland came up with this sand-based battery that traps excess thermal energy in large silos (thermal energy that would otherwise be wasted!), reducing output demand from power plants. The climate crisis has also given rise to an increase in electric vehicle production from many of the world's top car manufacturers.

As demonstrated by the aforementioned sand battery, one way to decrease the negative effects of global climate change is to reduce the number of fossil fuels that need to be burned to keep infrastructure alive. To illustrate our current infrastructure needs, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal-based power plants collectively offered a capacity of 212 gigawatts across the United States as of September 2021. Combined, these plants contribute over 908 metric tons of CO2 to the global atmosphere per year, though over 28% of United States-based coal plants are estimated to shut down by 2035. 

That timeframe may be too little, too late to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, but it hasn't stopped several companies across the world from taking matters into their own hands. First opened for business on July 1, one Swiss company is making the most of hydroelectric power with a storage equivalent of more than 400,000 electric car batteries in a reservoir deep in the Swiss Alps. No, this isn't the plot of the latest "007" movie; this is Nant de Drance.