Alternatives are essential

Charlie Reid, Co-Lead APAC for Climate Infrastructure, BlackRock

Nick Carter, CEO, Akaysha Energy

Charlie: Battery storage is one of the critical technologies to enable the energy transition globally. Australia has fast emerged as one of the most exciting markets for battery storage, and Akaysha Energy, following our investment, has become one of the leading players both in Australia and globally.¹

TEXT: Energy transition partnerships in action: Akaysha Energy

Charlie: So, Nick, Akaysha has been on a very rapid journey of growth. It'll be great to hear a little bit about Akaysha’s origins.

Nick: We started the business three years ago (in) 2021. And since that time, we've grown to about 115 people. And we have about 1.65GW in construction in Australia² at the moment. We've also started offices in Tokyo, Singapore, and in the US in Portland. The future’s looking very bright.

Charlie: That’s great to hear. What are your near-term targets? What do you see as some of the key opportunities you’re looking to address?

Nick: In Australia, we’ve got ten projects in late-stage development. We’ve got another set of 5 or 6 projects in Australia, which are all very large projects similar to the Waratah Super Battery. The Waratah battery, just for context, is an 850MW, 1.6GWh project³. It's designed to support the New South Wales grid, in particular Sydney and Wollongong, Newcastle area, acting as a shock absorber for intermittent renewable generation, and also, the network tripping off in various circumstances. Having BlackRock's team involved from the very early stages in that project was very helpful because it took a lot of vision to see what the potential was of that site.

Charlie: We've been working closely, raising significant capital for you. But this is really just the start of the journey. So, what’s next for Akaysha?

Nick: The partnership has been fantastic. Akaysha’s vision is to really accelerate the energy transition. And we couldn’t have done that without support and vision and obviously the capital. We’ve also had a number of introductions to some great contacts across the infrastructure and energy space, which has made a huge difference to our expansion.

Charlie: As you look forward, over the very long term, what’s your vision for the energy transition and the power grids of the future?

Nick: I think what we're going to see is very large systems becoming more commonplace, like the ones we are providing from the Waratah Super Battery, to keep the grid healthy and stable. Data centers and data center load is becoming a significant accelerator of the energy transition. And those assets also need very large storage to help them integrate into the grid. So I think the scale of what we're seeing, we're only at the tip of the iceberg at the moment.

Charlie: And as we look across Asia Pacific and what we've been doing from a BlackRock infrastructure perspective, I think that's been one of the key trends we've been investing across the region. We've invested in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand. Those markets are all very different. But each of those markets needs battery storage at very significant scale. And Akaysha has the ability to leverage its expertise from the Australian market, to really drive into those markets and help lead a very orderly energy transition.

¹Source: Forbes Australia, data as of April 2024.
²Source: Akaysha Energy, data as of September 2024.
³Source: Akaysha Energy, data as of July 2024.

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