the use of sustainable energy planet 8 talks to others who aren't so sure. after a short break, i'm for more news visit as a d, w dot com or download the dw news app. and david levitz, thanks for watching the living independent, arise to our society is full of contrasts and any policy is a big settings. many problems can only be solved by working together. yes, i think i pretend isn't misleading. what is home? how do we talk of the major issues about time to because there is a significant risk of human extinction from advancing our systems. climate changes

the new frontier of social recording. our series continued on d, w. the . this is a battery. it might not look like one, but this way to get stuff the energy it took to move it up here. when it's released, it can pull up this light a. and a lot of companies want to bid large versions of this. really large hind to the skies deep into the ground or up on mountains. it's called gravity energy storage or gravity, battery flush out. and the companies behind them are making a thought as saying they would be able to store large amounts of renewable energy for times when supply is short. like when the sun is shining and the winds doesn't float. that's where a novel, new energy storage technology comes to play. they didn't find announcing that it is

investing a $110000000.00. why are we not spending trillions right now to be building this stuff? so our gravity, batteries going to make it big. first, let's take a look at how these batteries work. when we produce more electricity, then we need to like in the middle of the day when that's lots of solar energy. we can use that energy to lift a heavy weight. it just hangs around until we lower it again, then we'll try becomes a generate to and feeds electricity back into the grid. this technology could be a good way to cut c o 2 emissions. we need a lot of renewable energy and places to store it. the international energy agency says more than $25000.00 gigs of an o. s by 24. that's enough to power countries like power rock, why or 2 unusual for an entire year. and it's $2.00 times more storage than we have today. but those numbers don't fully capture the challenge today. most energy

storage is pumped storage hydropower. so damned, so the rest of us, we've talked about that in a moment, but we won't be able to nearly triple that kind of capacity. so actually we need to expend all the storage, not 2.8, but at least 22 times more than we can today. now that's a challenge to achieve this huge growth and storage capacity. developers have mainly been looking at lithium ion batteries, like the bodies just phone laptops, just a lot bigger. it has a number of problems though. we've made a video about it, which you can find to you. in short, lithium mining pollutes the environment and exploits people. sometimes the better is catch fire or explode. they degrade rather quickly. and today's grid scale lifting mind batteries can store only a few hours energy to cover the daily peaks in the month. but with more and more renewable energy, we need even more reliable,

short and long term storage. and that could be 6 hours, 6 days, 6 weeks or even months. like i said earlier, pump storage hydropower is grateful this. it's been around for more than a century and still makes up over 95 percent of our storage capacity. you pump water up when there's an edit this up less and let it flow down food headlines when energy is needed. notice anything? yep, that's gravity at work. pump. toddress tried and tested, but doesn't work just any. well, it requires lots of construction work and disrupts natural habitats. and you need to and a lot of the water. it's not easy to scale it but, but the gravity principle is we basically mirror that same process, but instead of water for one of our solutions, we use blocks. that's robot. the co need co founder and ceo of can edge evolved, which currently is the biggest gravity energy storage. develop the arrows essentially, depending on the size of the system, can be up to thousands of them for systems. second,

2020 and then do all the this prototype in switzerland, 6 crane stick to concrete blocks up to a height of 70 meters. the prototype proves that the concept works, but it also receive criticism, such as that the structure didn't comply with building codes or might not. we stand extreme weather and the thousands of tons of concrete that went into the blocks or anything but climate, frankly. so in that you bought came up with this gravity, better rebuilding thousands of blocks are listed or low it and then stalled horizontally as seen here. or the 1st battery of that kind went into operation in rudolf chung. so province in china, in may of this year, it's taller than the great perimeter of design stuff. more than 3 and a half 1000 blocks weighing $25.00 tons each. they were made on site from excavated, sorry about the company says it could use waste materials such as cold as the old wind turbine plates. and it's 100 megawatt hour. so that you can think that it went

to power in about 35000 homes. but only for 2 to 3 hours. the company plans to bit fault to give it all as of gravity, batteries for china, or 40 times this one. now the smaller storage facility is suppose to go online and snider, texas this year. and plants on the way in southern africa to the company has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, including lifetime saudi, a remco and leo not a dicaprio because you must admit it all sounds very promising. it's predictable, like some type of storage, but can be paid pretty much anywhere. it doesn't need scarce resources and it lost a lot longer than that to mind. storage. that's because with this you mind kind of good processes, aging and sheet to limit the better we live, to know more than 15 years. look at your phone and how long the battery loss now compared to when you bought it. it's the same thing. the gravity batteries couldn't see erie lift the weight and keep it up for 60 years. then what are some items

replacing? but the weights installed energy would remain in place. the biggest drawback is the cost that's having a strike to senior research associate at bloomberg. any f energy storage team, they've recently published a study comparing several long duration energy storage solutions, including gravity storage. and what we found is that gravity, batteries has a higher average cost and higher cost range from all the other long duration technologies. one of the reasons that they have a very high cost is because we have very low energy density. so you need sort of larger infrastructure in order to get the same in order to store the same energy as you would need for lithium ion battery. for example, the gravity battery interview don't start the same amount of energy as this lithium ion battery. but the gravity battery needs much more space and bidding materials. so the initial cost is higher. it also loses out in other ways. storage operate as

the money by discharging the energy and selling it for more than they paid chemical storage, like lithium and can react and milliseconds to market need switched last for a lot of quick profit taking a gravity battery mechanically lifts and lowest weight, which takes time and limits profit options. so gravity, battery capacity is more expensive. right now. it's doubled the cost of lifting mine technology. but develop as like energy box one to convince investors to think long term. because they have such a long life time. so 5060 years, which is considerably higher compared to lithium ion. um they may claims that levelized cost of storage over the duration of the project life time is, is lower. if the high startup costs of gravity, batteries even out over time, partly due to the low cost of maintenance that might make them competitive in the long run. that can we make these batteries cheap and now let's go on the ground.

the deeper the mind, the cheapest it is, the more energy you can store. julian honda has been researching gravity batteries for a number of years. he's proposing to put them in the shops of the commission mines . we looked at a $1500.00 underground coal mines and from these coal mines we, we estimate capacity of 70 total. what's our storage? $7.00 to $10.00 of the hours of energy is huge. it's what the entire world needs in a day, and it's 700000 times the capacity of this. and that's just the old coal mine chests, which are particularly deep abandoned to methyl minds. could also work to companies from scotland and australia has been small pilot project above crowns and one to

install gravity, batteries and from a mines in europe and australia. the idea is to have a small number of very heavy weights moving up and down the empty shaft installation costs for this kind of gravity. energy storage could be fairly low. underground mines have the road access. they have transmission lines into the mind . so you can use that grab a tricity and green gravity hope to go online with this type of storage by 2027. they say the energy could be stored for up to 9 or even 12 hours. but julian, honda is looking for a long story each times much later. so for example, for one season to another, from one year to another, energy could then be stored when it's really cheap and used when it's much more expensive, which could make it a profitable solution. whether it's 4 hours a month, we'd only know if this system works as planned. once it's been built. they are also some even boat designs for the fishing gravity. batteries like sinking

a giant piston into the ground and raising and lowering it with the waltz underneath. the idea has been around for years but has increased the pilot stage ships. and now the idea involves weights on wagons, on race going up and down and mountain. that idea is over 10 years old, but hasn't gone anywhere yet. and that revolved is planning an updated version which looks a bit like a ski lift with weights. they say this system could be more efficient than the stand alone gravity. batteries they're making. now. we don't do anything small and gravity, in fact, a 100 megawatt hour in china is that the smallest we would ever do everything we're looking at now for these applications of gravity, libertine slopes and things are all, most likely you want hours. and soon gravity. batteries might be installed in skyscrapers. and if you want plants to do, just that in collaboration with an engineering company, the gravity and it just started just still in its infancy. it can compete with the

scaling, low cost of lithium ion storage. but it doesn't have to, since gravity storage is intended for long term storage of 6 hours or more. but they are all the new technologies in that energy segment that are already more cost effective today. like total energy compressed air or gas and it just started. and according to bloomberg, any f, the cost of gravity, energy storage is likely to drop by only 2 percent to yeah, i would not say we say this becoming mainstream. um, i think a big part of the excitement is because it's normal and so simple. and like so different conceptually, what we think of us as battery. so gravity, batteries might become one of many options to store energy long term. but you probably won't be seeing many of these popping up near you any time soon. if you want to learn more about all the energy storage technologies like solid or even the ocean, go check out our channel and subscribe. we post

a new video every friday. ready ready ready ready ready ready or the will illegal immigration to the usa determine the american dental election. on the one hand, some voters do strongly motivated by hatred and ignorance. on the other hand, there was a lot of solidarity and a willingness to support one another trumps wall. and the border crisis flows next on d w, getting voice to traumatize, and this is the journey to building the independent radio. the destruction of muscle cannot hold them back because the deer and these frames

had a big vision in my family said, don't come back again, but why don't come back returning to the ruins of most of the in 45 minutes on d w, the . this is henry for the future. i'm seeing in southwest telling us 32000000 people live here. many of them are young and then the 3 is coming through making money. having fun stuff, september 19th on d. w. a. living sign in d. w. postcard. how to make greener choices in your everyday lives. but honestly,

try to move. you're going to working 32 hours a week to be better for the environment than 40. but of course we shouldn't be 90, be the living scientists just hit subscribe. whatever you listen to, what cost the these women men and goals come from venezuela and home doors that trying to enter the united states. the move is tense. let's do you know where you're going in? who the kenneth, i mean the road isn't finished. there's a way through over there, but not if there's police there's a small by the river where the woofers darker.