The Energy Storage Partnership (ESP) aims to “catalyse a new market for batteries”, beyond the current focus on the market to supply electric vehicles, the bank said.

According to the bank, “the requirements of developing countries’ grids are not yet fully considered in the current energy storage market— even though these countries may have the largest potential for battery deployment”.

The ESP “will take a holistic, technology-neutral approach by including all forms of energy storage, including batteries”, the bank said. The partners’ activities will include identifying “technical and research gaps and piloting innovative storage concepts”.

World Bank senior director for energy and extractives Riccardo Puliti (pictured) said: “The fast growth we’re seeing in the electric vehicle market is exactly what we need for energy storage in power systems around the world. We want to see batteries connected to the grid, serving mini-grids, and enabling much more use of renewable power from the sun and wind.”

The bank did not disclose financial commitments under the ESP, but said the partnership would “complement” the US$1 billion battery storage investment programme it launched last September.

ESP members include the China Energy Storage Association, European Association for Storage of Energy, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, the Korea Battery Industry Association, the UK’s Faraday Institution and the US Energy Storage Association.

There is only about a minute left on the battery industry’s ‘Doomsday Clock’ to fight for the survival of the lead-acid industry in Europe.

That was the message to last week’s European Lead Battery Conference in Vienna from Eurobat chief Rene Schroeder, as we report in this edition.

But as much as we welcome the battle cry from those whose job it is to champion our industry, their clocks and watches are wrong. As footballers would say, we’re in injury time, lead-acid has been given a kicking thanks to the toxic red tape of Brussels and ignorance of policymakers. We’ve run out of real playing time.

Lead-acid in the EU has been inflicted with life-changing wounds and is now facing defeat on political penalty points. The only thing left to the battery industry’s ‘defenders’ is to speak bluntly to power. Show the red card to those Eurocrats plotting to kill of industry jobs. No more softly-softly cosy briefings and lunches with the same old wet-lettuce platitudes we’ve heard since the 2006 incarnation of the Batteries Directive.

Hard ball is now the only game in town. Get stuck in and make sure every single battery worker and business in Europe knows the names of those ‘Eurocrats’ senselessly plotting to kill off their jobs.