Publisher: Energy Innovation
Date: April 2025
Authors: Eric Gimon; Michelle Solomon
Introduction Summary
“As electricity grids around the world transition to clean energy, the electrification of other sectors such as buildings, transportation, and industry continue to add electricity demand. Intuitively, more demand would make cleaning up the grid harder—more infrastructure, more power plants, and greater complexity. But innovative technology and well-designed policy can enable electrification of these other sectors, particularly industry, to aid in the electricity system’s transition to clean resources. This paper explores an emerging approach to transform cheap, clean renewable generation by co-locating with symbiotic new industries that can use electricity flexibly and how it could apply in Pueblo, Colorado. The combined resource creates a more dispatchable and reliable electric grid asset while at the same time providing an opportunity for host communities to capture more of the economic benefits of the energy transition. We refer to this approach as an “energy park.”
Instead of having to curtail or export renewable generation in times of high electricity production, the flexible industrial technologies included in this new approach absorb that excess electricity for local industrial use and can even provide some of it back to the grid during times of need, serving as a form of long-duration storage. Flexible industries benefit from participation in the energy park because they can access lower electricity prices by primarily using electricity during times of lower demand. Examples include thermal batteries, which can convert electricity to heat for direct use in many industrial processes that require heat, or electrolytic hydrogen facilities that use electricity to make hydrogen out of water. Hydrogen can then be used to produce commodities like ammonia or sustainable aviation fuel. In an energy park, cheap power from excess clean energy stimulates a diverse set of local business activities with economic benefits, which are wider, deeper, and more sustainable than benefits that depend on hosting a single large electricity generator. The purpose of this paper is to flesh out how combining flexible industrial technologies, referred to as “flexible loads,” with solar and wind generation and short-duration batteries all located in proximity can create a resource that is more than the sum of its parts and that helps solve key reliability challenges for any grid.”