Europe appears to be slower and less bold than other markets like the US when it comes to financial support for upstream battery material projects like lithium refining, a company looking to invest half a billion euros in an EU project told Energy-Storage.news.

A long-duration energy storage system using NGK’s sodium-sulfur (NAS) batteries has been commissioned by a subsidiary of German chemicals company BASF, which seeks out high growth opportunity businesses to work with. 

The past few days have seen various announcements across the lithium-ion battery production value chain in Europe, Australia and the US.

Multinational chemicals company BASF has furthered its interest in the energy storage industry, partnering on the development of ‘metal-free’ flow battery electrolytes with German startup JenaBatteries.

Idaho-headquartered KORE Power claims it will have 6GWh annual production capacity for its lithium battery energy storage solutions, based on high-power nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells, up and running during the first quarter of next year.

BASF is using NGK Insulators’ sodium sulfur batteries as its entry point into the energy market, with the German chemical company signing up as a sales partner to the Japanese manufacturer.

A fire at a large-scale battery energy storage project late last week left four firefighters injured in Arizona, with two reported to be seriously injured, in an incident now under investigation.