The venture capital investors PT1 and Future Energy Ventures are joining forces with the German Energy Storage Systems Association BVES for a ‘Think & Do Tank on Battery Energy Storage Systems’. The initiative kicked-off at the beginning of September with a roundtable on the topic of ‘Grid Level Battery Energy Storage Systems – Status Quo Germany’.

Construction data is hard, and not as simple as do-re-mi (last Jackson 5 reference I promise). Sites and projects are complex, prone to going over budget and creeping out of scope. This makes it hard to understand which materials have gone into a building and where they came from. But why does this matter?

We see a lot of deals at PT1, across different sectors, stages, and countries. Often, we’d sit and go through our data, trying to find trends and stories to tell. Occasionally, we’d go through other databases as well, and see how the market was doing. These were always internal exercises, designed to help us reflect and take stock of what was going on.

This time, we’re doing something differently. We’ve analysed every single transaction that took place in Europe from September 23 and February 24 (data from Crunchbase). Here, in our first public report, we can share the results.

Real estate is carbon-intensive. Operating and constructing buildings makes up 40% of the EU’s energy consumption – and the majority is from operations. All realistic net-zero pathways have decarbonising buildings as a central part. But we’re behind target. The residential retrofit rate in Germany has hovered at 1% of housing stock for the last few years. At this rate it will take over a century to decarbonise residential buildings alone (way beyond our targets).

Across the world real estate developers and cities are planning, building and retrofitting buildings and urban districts with the aim of reducing the environmental impact of the built environment. The path to net-zero requires the development and implementation of a renewable energy strategy. In this article, we will discuss the challenges associated with integrating green energy production on-site, and how innovative technologies can address those challenges while opening new opportunities.