In its quest for enough electricity to power its data centers beyond the wind and solar it’s purchased for years, Google has backed next-generation small modular reactors, a nuclear fusion company, and just last week inked the world’s biggest hydropower deal.
Now the Alphabet-owned tech giant has signed its first commercial long-duration storage deal — which is also the data center industry’s first major contract for power from a carbon dioxide-based battery. As part of the deal, the Silicon Valley goliath is making a strategic investment in Energy Dome, the Italian startup seeking to mainstream the CO2 batteries.
Housing under a round, white dome that evokes the inflatable roofing that covers professional tennis tournaments, Energy Dome uses electricity to pump carbon dioxide into a compressor that heats and pressurizes the gas before turning it into a liquid. The liquefied carbon dioxide is then stored in carbon steel tanks. When energy is needed, an evaporator turns the liquid into pressurized gas.
Once reheated, it’s pumped through turbines to generate electricity continuously for between eight and 24 hours. Unlike a lithium battery, which loses power over time, the stored CO2 can maintain its power volumes for long periods.
The Google deal “aims to develop CO2 battery projects in all key geographical strategic areas, including in Europe, America and the Asia-Pacific region, with the goal of scaling up deployment at a rapid pace,” the companies said in a press release. A “pipeline of sites and projects has been identified,” which “are currently in development and contracting stages.”
Founded in 2020, Energy Dome is expanding its footprint quickly. The Italian startup signed a deal last October to build the first CO2 battery in the U.S.: a 20 MW pilot project in Wisconsin for Alliant Energy. In December, it inked an offtake agreement with the French utility Engie for its first pilot project in Sardinia. And in January, the startup made a deal to build its first 160 MW project in India.
A key part of the company’s pitch is affordability and potentially an easy path to financing.
“We took existing off-the-shelf components from established supply chains — that are readily available, cost-competitive, with performance guarantees, and with which banks are comfortable — and integrated those in a novel way,” Ben Potter, Energy Dome’s chief operating officer, told Latitude Media in January. “We’ve innovated on the process, not on the supply chain and the commercial side. We’re not reinventing the wheel.”
A spokesperson for Energy Dome declined to release the terms of the deal.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on July 25 to clarify the physics of how the Energy Dome system works.
