Energy Dome, a provider of long-duration energy storage solutions, raised €40 million (~$44 million) in a Series B funding round led by Eni Next and Neva SGR. The investment will help Energy Dome scale up its CO2 Battery technology, which uses carbon dioxide to store renewable energy on the grid.
The funding round also saw the participation of existing investors, such as Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital, CDP Venture Capital, Novum Capital Partners, and 360 Capital, and investors, such as Japan Energy Fund and Elemental Excelerator.
The company’s technology is based on closed thermodynamic transformation. They manipulate the CO2 between its gaseous and liquid phases. The CO2 warms up, evaporates, and expands whenever energy is needed, turning a turbine and generating electricity.
By storing the CO2 in the liquid phase at ambient temperature, they claim to reduce the typical storage costs associated with Compressed Air Energy Storage without dealing with cryogenic temperatures associated with Liquid Air Energy Storage.
“Imagine a system that can store renewable energy with 75% RTE (AC-AC, MV-MV) and a cost which is half the cost of lithium. A system that has no degradation over 30 years and that is made of just steel, water and CO2. Now imagine that that system is made of existing and well-known components that any power plant operator is capable of maintaining and operating, and those components are deployable at GWh scale globally with no bottlenecks on the supply chain or specific site constraints. If you like this idea, stop imagining. Because this is reality, the technology is sorted. Our CO2 Battery™ is ready for the market and, after closing the Series B round, we are ready to guarantee its performance to any customer that is real about getting rid of fossil fuels and substituting with dispatchable renewable energies, ” said Claudio Spadacini, Energy Dome’s Founder and CEO.
According to Mercom’s Q1 2023 Storage and Smart Grid Funding and M&A Report, VC funding (including private equity and corporate venture capital) raised by Energy Storage companies in Q1 2023 came to $1.1 billion in 19 deals, an 8% decrease year-over-year (YoY) compared to $1.2 billion in 22 deals in Q1 2022.
