By Victor Tangermann
Publication Date: 2025-12-27 14:00:00
While we’ve made major strides in generating renewable energy, storing that green power to use when the Sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing remains a major engineering challenge.
Researchers have developed many creative concepts — storing it in cranes that hoist humongous concrete blocks up and down, inside hot giant rocks, or spinning turbines by pumping water out of deep, decommissioned mines — none have yet proved practical enough for wide deployment.
Now, as IEEE Spectrum reports, a Milan-based company called Energy Dome has come up with an intriguing approach that stores energy in enormous domes that are filled with compressed carbon dioxide gas.
The idea behind the “CO2 battery” is simple. By compressing the gas using excess green power, it can later be depressurized to spin large turbines. A fully charged facility can store a formidable 200 megawatt-hours of electricity — enough to power around 6,000 homes for a full day.
To charge,…
