Maybe the coolest idea that I've heard of in years is the business model of this company.
One of the major downsides of renewable energy sources like solar or wind is that you don't have the same amount of energy being constantly produced over an interval of even one day. So you will need to somehow store that energy in order for it to be available at night or when there is no wind blowing in the turbines, but batteries are extremely expensive and pollute a lot in their production.
As an alternative to storing energy into batteries, Energy Vault is lifting heavy blocks of material with surplus energy available and when there is a demand of energy it brings those blocks down in exchange for that energy. Basically it is converting the electrical energy into potential energy based on one of our basic and still not understood forces: gravity.
Innovations like this one, even as simple as this are required to enable our transition to a green future with very low carbon emissions.
Thanks for reading and take care of this planet!
