Welcome on Board CATL

The European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) is glad to extend a warm welcome to its newest member CATL who upgraded their EASE membership in December 2023. Mr. LiBin Tan, President of ESS, accepted to discuss with us about the expertise of CATL, in energy storage and expectations from this collaboration with EASE.

EASE: Thank you for accepting this interview. We're delighted to have CATL as a new member. Can you provide an overview of CATL’s activities in the energy storage sector and share some key insights from your company's work in this field?

We’d like to establish a deeper cooperation with EASE. As a global leader in new energy innovative technologies, CATL is dedicated to supporting the global energy transition and continuously developing in the electrochemical energy storage industry.

Since it was established in 2011, CATL has been strategically focused on energy storage. In 2019, CATL began the mass production of long-life batteries capable of 12,000 cycles, maintaining a leading position in both energy storage batteries and systems. Over the past few years, we have collaborated with power groups to deliver large-scale energy storage systems co-located with renewable power plants for peak shaving and to raise renewable integration to the grid. We have also delivered stand-alone energy storage systems to support grid expansion and frequency regulation and provide service in end-use sector.

We continue to collaborate with influential utilities, developers and investors such as RWE, Enel, Tesla, Fluence, Wärtsilä, Gresham House and etc., to support the green transformation of Europe's electricity systems. Our current energy storage product portfolio ranges from energy storage cells, modules, cabinets to containers.

For the European market, we believe that the value of energy storage hinges on 3 factors: 1) lifecycle safety performance; 2) lifecycle carbon emissions; 3) lifecycle cost. CATL has a department of over 300 engineers specializing in safety and reliability, committed to continuous innovation in materials, structure, manufacturing, testing, and validation. CATL has announced our goals to achieve carbon neutrality in core operations by 2025 and across the entire value chain by 2035, having three lighthouse factories and four zero-carbon battery production bases.

With excellent supply chain management, CATL is capable of providing the most competitive energy storage products for Europe's renewable energy industry.

EASE: We anticipate a fruitful collaboration and value your contributions to our Working Groups and Task Forces. What motivated CATL to join EASE, and what specific areas or initiatives are you most excited about participating in within our association?

CATL considers EASE to be the premier energy storage industry partner in Europe. We aim to leverage EASE's extensive membership network and influence in policymaking circle to understand the latest trends in European energy storage policies, regulations and standards, and to track the latest requirements from energy storage industry.

EASE can help us in providing the most suitable solutions for the European market. Furthermore, EASE is influential in energy storage related policy analysis and persuasion, market insights and communication.

As an official member of EASE, CATL will partake in more EASE activities, contributing our expertise in policy discussion to foster faster deployment of energy storage, better understanding European regulations and market demand, and engaging more with our European customers and partners, thereby contributing to European energy transition.

EASE: Looking ahead, how do you envision energy storage contributing to the ongoing energy transition? What role do you see CATL playing in advancing and shaping the future of energy storage within this context?

As an increasing share of renewable generation is brought on grid, we believe that energy storage will play an indispensable role in power system, particularly in grid balancing on time scales ranging from seconds to minutes to hours.

The instantaneous response speed, precise power control, and highly flexible planning capability of battery energy storage can reduce short-term spikes and volatility caused by intermittent renewables.

In the next decade, the European grid will undergo a phase of grid upgrades and a continuous increase of the renewable power ratio, leading to a decrease in grid inertia and more incidents of power shortages and congestions.

Under these conditions, how to maintain low-cost, low-carbon, high-efficiency, and high-reliability grid operations, to avoid the risk of regressing to fossil fuels and achieve net-zero targets, requires the cooperation of governments, institutions and companies.

We must continue to explore the value of electrochemical energy storage in rapid response, peak shifting, reserve capacity, black start, reactive power compensation, and other dimensions.

By the end of 2023, CATL has delivered more than 10GWh of energy storage products to Europe, building over a hundred FTM projects in UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and Belgium and many more. By the solid performance and quality control ability for batteries and energy storage systems, CATL will continue to provide the most reliable solutions for Europe's energy transition.

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