Peter Aldous
The UK’s energy storage sector is on the brink of historic growth. The increased ability to store power goes beyond supporting the grid’s ability to manage greater low-carbon and renewable power supplies. Lower costs and new business models have the potential to bring enormous change. Self-generation of electricity will become more popular, our industrial base will be more competitive and cheap renewables can be more easily deployed if the ability to store energy becomes more widespread.
And yet, despite the triumphs of private- sector innovation and the support of the nation’s academic powerhouses— the lithium-ion battery was invented in Oxford—a slower-to-evolve regulatory system risks incapacitating our growth.