David Wong and EnPot's Dr Nick Depree, Mark Dorreen and Geoff Matthews discuss how the world’s aluminium smelters could enable the rapid uptake of renewables in global power systems in The Chemical Engineer. Decarbonising the energy sector by 2050 is a key aim of the International Energy Agency (IEA), as one of the outcomes of the Paris Agreement.

While renewables uptake must continue and intensify, the unpredictable nature of new sources of variable renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, poses a major technical challenge for power systems worldwide.

As variable renewable energy increases, generation becomes less dispatchable and more variable, so the question remains: "what grid-scale solutions should be used to balance electricity demand with generation?."