Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to contribute original manuscripts to the Special Issue of Sustainability on the “Role of Energy Storage in Low-Carbon and High-Renewable Energy Systems”.

Deep and wide-ranging transformation is expected in energy supply systems around the world over the next few decades to achieve the ambitious targets set for decarbonisation. The UK was the first major economy in the world to enshrine in law its commitment to end its contribution to global warming by 2050, and is being closely followed by many other major economies. The concerns over climate change are global and many countries are aiming to achieve a 100% renewable energy supply by 2050.

To achieve net-zero energy supply based on renewables, the energy system will need to address significant challenges, including the management of the variability of renewable generation through dealing with increased balancing requirements, reduced system inertia and increased uncertainty affecting the security of supply, while decarbonising the heat and transport sectors. These developments will give rise to an increased need for flexibility to support cost-effective operation and investment in energy systems. Flexible options that appear to hold promise for future energy systems include energy storage, demand-side response, expanding interconnection capacity and sector coupling. Set against these challenges are opportunities associated with a continued and rapid decline in the cost of renewable generation technologies (wind and solar PV), accompanied by a sharp decrease in the cost of energy storage, in particular battery technologies.

In this context, there is a clear need for tools and approaches that allow for the adequate evaluation of the role of energy storage in future low-carbon energy systems, cost-efficient deployment of various energy storage technologies, and methods for assessing the performance of energy storage assets in future markets for energy and ancillary services.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Methods for quantifying cost-efficient deployment of energy storage in low-carbon and net-zero carbon energy systems
• Assessing whole-system benefits of energy storage across different segments (generation/supply, transmission, distribution) of future low-carbon energy systems
• Role of flexibility provided by energy storage in managing fluctuating output of renewable generation
• Role of distributed energy storage technologies in supporting distributed renewable generation, minimizing household energy bills and avoiding local grid reinforcement
• Suitability of different energy storage technologies and their technical parameters (e.g., roundtrip efficiency, duration) for deployment in high-renewable systems
• Provision of ancillary services in low-carbon electricity systems through energy storage
• Role of long-duration storage in handling inter-seasonal variations in renewable output and energy demand
• Opportunities to use energy storage across vectors through sector coupling (e.g., thermal or hydrogen storage) to support the deployment of variable renewables
• Using EV batteries to manage charging and discharging (V2G) to support the system integration of renewables in systems with high electrification of road transport
• Opportunities for co-locating energy storage technologies and renewable generation
• Commercial and business case for energy storage in future energy markets
• Contribution of energy storage to the security of supply in low-carbon energy systems
• Option value of energy storage for dealing with uncertainties driven by the deployment of renewable generation

Dr. Marko Aunedi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• energy storage
• whole-system assessment
• power system flexibility
• cross-sector coupling, renewable integration
• electric vehicles
• battery storage
• thermal storage