Humans have long built towering structures to showcase the power of empires, rulers, religions, and corporations. Today, more tall buildings are popping up than ever before. But skyscrapers could soon have a new purpose: storing renewable energy. One of the biggest hurdles to a power grid dominated by clean energy is the intermittency of some renewable sources. Storage is crucial for balancing generation and consumption, and a combination of technologies will likely be necessary to increase capacity. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) announced a partnership with Energy Vault to develop new gravity energy storage solutions, including a skyscraper design that uses motors powered by grid electricity to elevate giant blocks when energy demand is low and release them to generate electricity when demand is high.
If the world wants to reach net zero by 2050, grid-scale storage will need to be ramped up, according to the International Energy Association. Lithium-ion batteries, though popular, can't store energy for long periods, while pumped storage hydropower requires hilly terrain and a lot of space. SOM and Energy Vault’s superstructure tower could range from 300 to 1,000 meters in height, with hollowed-out structures for moving the blocks and space for residential and commercial tenants. The firms are also considering integrating pumped storage hydropower into skyscrapers. Multi-gigawatt-hours of energy could be stored, enough to power several buildings.
Enabling the use of renewable energy would help offset the carbon footprint of supertall buildings, which are responsible for almost 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts to address this include better insulation and using less carbon-intensive materials like timber. Some buildings are literally getting greener, such as Milan's towers covered in trees and shrubs designed by Italian architect Stefano Boeri, who has also unveiled a similar design for towers in Dubai.
