Energy Vault to Help Korea Zinc Subsidiary Produce Green Zinc

Energy Vault is partnering with Korea Zinc, a company involved in non-ferrous metal smelting production, such as that of zinc, lead, silver and rare metal indium, for renewable energy storage.

Through this partnership, Korea Zinc aims to decarbonize its refining and smelting operations, focused initially under its wholly-owned subsidiary Sun Metals Corporation. The companies expect to begin project deployment in mid-2022.

Australia-based Sun Metals is targeting to become one of the first zinc refineries to produce “Green” Zinc in support of their broader strategy to shift to 100% renewable power by 2040, with an interim target of 80% renewable by 2030.

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“As the second largest consumer of electricity in Queensland, Sun Metals has a strong focus on being both environmentally responsible and the most competitive zinc refinery in the world,” said Kiwon Park, CEO of Sun Metals.

Korea Zinc recently announced Ark Energy Corporation, another wholly-owned Australian subsidiary, will acquire a 100% interest in utility-scale wind and solar energy developer Epuron in Australia.

“Energy Vault’s innovative storage technology and energy management software platform can play a key role in enabling and accelerating our decarbonization strategy as we enhance our ability to power our operations with renewable energy,” said Yun B. Choi, Vice Chairman of Korea Zinc.

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Energy Vault develops sustainable energy storage and management solutions designed to enhance utility-scale energy storage for grid resiliency. The company’s proprietary gravity-based Energy Storage Technology and the Energy Storage Management and Integration Platform are intended to help utilities, independent power producers and large industrial energy users significantly reduce their levelised cost of energy while maintaining power reliability.

“We are proud to partner with Korea Zinc and Sun Metals to broadly support their clean energy transition within their refining operations,” said Robert Piconi, CEO and Co-Founder, Energy Vault. “Korea Zinc has demonstrated tremendous global leadership as a company in setting aggressive decarbonization targets and then investing significant capital to make sustainable, decarbonized energy a reality for their operations, and that certainly is the case here with their investment in Energy Vault.”