Low Carbon sells 6GW Dutch BESS portfolio to S4 Energy
Low Carbon sells 6GW Netherlands BESS portfolio to S4 Energy
Castleton Commodities International LLC (CCI) subsidiary S4 Energy has acquired Netherlands battery energy storage system (BESS) development platform LC Energy, and its 6GW pipeline of projects, from developer Low Carbon.
CCI is a commodities trader and acquired Dutch energy storage developer and operator S4 Energy last year, while LC Energy was, prior to this deal, a joint venture entity between UK-headquartered Low Carbon and Dutch firm QING.
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LC Energy’s pipeline includes four, 4-hour medium voltage BESS projects in the Netherlands, all of which are set to come online next year. Energy-Storage.news spoke with the firm’s management team in September about a 500MW/2,000MWh permitted project, the largest to reach that stage in the country, though that is not coming online until 2026.
Low Carbon initially announced the deal this morning (29 October) via a Reuters report that said LC Energy’s pipeline of projects in the Netherlands totalled 6GW, while CCI’s announcement a few hours later said it was 7.5GW, potentially including projects outside the country.
The Netherlands is targeting 39% renewable electricity by 2030 and the large-scale BESS market has progressed in the past year or two, evidenced by a flurry of gigawatt-hour-scale projects moving forward, including LC Energy’s and others from Dispatch, Lion Storage, Giga Storage, SemperPower, Corre Energy, PowerField and RWE.
All those announcements came after transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT introduced a ‘flexilisation’ of grid fees, which provided a solution to one of the Dutch market’s main challenges for BESS deployment.
S4 Energy was one of the early movers in the Dutch BESS market with a c.10MW project combining lithium-ion systems and a flywheel coming online in 2020, and this deal brings it into the large-scale space which companies like Lion, Giga and SemperPower have led to-date.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”