The road to resilience: how second life battery energy storage systems can help deliver energy security

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shone a spotlight on Europe’s fragile energy security

At first glance, a simple equation might suggest the answer is merely generating more energy domestically to reduce reliance on imports – whether that is fossil fuels in the form of oil and gas, or electricity via interconnectors.

However, energy independence requires more than powering solar panels or wind turbines. To truly address the challenge of intermittency, we need to integrate advanced, sustainable battery storage technologies. This technology offers a path to energy security, but only if we address it in the right way.

Fossil fuels

Historical reliance on fossil fuels has come at a price. While the UK only imported a fraction of its gas from Russia, gas prices in the first six months of the Ukraine crisis still spiralled to nine times the cost of renewable energy. The economic fallout, including inflation and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, underlined the urgency to transition away from unstable and unsustainable energy sources.

After banning Russian gas, the UK now imports its fossil fuels from a more diverse number of partners. But many are petrostates in the Middle East, another area of intense instability.

Renewables and Energy Storage

Renewables offers two solutions in one, by supporting sustainability goals and reducing reliance on energy from foreign states. Energy storage goes hand in hand with this technology, helping us optimise its benefits. As we become more reliant on renewables, our energy generation becomes more dispersed.  Battery energy storage provides the control mechanism to give us grid resilience, by balancing energy demand with generation.

While this sounds ideal, there is a catch. The exponential growth of renewables increases demand for battery energy storage systems (BESS). But the batteries for these BESS – or the components and materials within them – are still predominantly coming from outside of Europe.

If geopolitics leads to a scenario where Europe can no longer access this supply chain, then we lose a key plank in our renewable energy strategy. There are similar potential issues around utility-scale BESS that are manufactured in Europe by non-European companies, again using a non-European supply chain.

Initiatives are underway to develop a European supply chain and manufacturing capabilities. But as Northvolt illustrates, this is not easy. Europe is still decades behind China and Korea in scaling battery production.

Second life batteries

Despite this rather gloomy scenario, the solution is already on our shores – and it lies in the electric vehicle industry.

The ongoing transition to EVs has created a huge reservoir of resources in the form of second life EV batteries. Once a vehicle reaches end of life, its batteries can be repurposed in BESS, providing a second life that could last a decade or more.

Based on the IEA’s global EV outlook report 2024, we can extrapolate that there is already more than 500 GWh of EV batteries in Europe. This is enough to meet all of our  BESS requirements – analysts predict up to 135GWh of battery energy storage installed by 2028, with circa 70% of it being commercial and utility scale (i.e., non-residential). This is a unique, untapped opportunity for energy security and renewables resilience. It also offers a crucial European-first solution.

Second life batteries bring wider benefits as there is no mining, refining and manufacturing required. And ultimately, the batteries will still be recycled. Therefore, by incentivising the use of second life batteries, we are no longer reliant on technology from outside the region to support decarbonisation and energy security goals.

Prioritise, incentivise

One lever at the EU’s disposal is tariffs. However, at Connected Energy we would rather see the EU use the carrot than the stick. Incentivising the production and deployment of second life battery energy storage systems would be a positive mechanism to support our energy security priorities.

The road to resilience doesn’t begin with waiting for the perfect technology or supply chain. It starts with leveraging the opportunities already in our grasp. By repurposing second life EV batteries for energy storage, Europe can secure not just its energy independence, but its global competitiveness in the green economy.