Developing battery storage in emerging markets isn't a technology problem - it's a regulatory, offtake, and capital problem. The frameworks, offtake structures, and capital mandates weren't built for storage and that gap is exactly where the risk sits.

Hassen Bali, co-founder and director at Ion Ventures, joins Ed Porter to discuss what it actually takes to develop battery storage projects across markets at very different stages of maturity, from the UK to Southeast Asia.

They cover:

- Why battery storage development demands a different approach to solar or wind and why you have to decide your commercial endpoint before you break ground, not after.

- How project conversion rates in the UK BESS market have dropped from 30–40% in the early days to roughly 10–15% today, and how that affects pipeline management and investor communications.

- Why early-stage BESS markets like Malaysia and the Philippines are still reliant on bilateral offtake and what that means for project bankability.

- Why FCA-regulated investors face hard legal barriers to project finance in sub-investment-grade countries and what that means for who can actually back early-stage BESS projects.

- Hassen's contrarian view: that reform of merit order and legacy thermal contracts is the most direct lever for accelerating energy transition globally even if it means unwinding agreements that investors consider bulletproof.

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Transcript available here:

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:53 What People Get Wrong About Developing Battery Storage Projects

2:41 BESS Project Development Pipeline: How to Manage Investors and Conversion Rates

5:58 Why Ion Ventures Expanded Into Southeast Asia

7:34 BESS Market Readiness in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei

8:32 Replacing Coal and Diesel: What Southeast Asian Grids Look Like Today

11:35 BESS Project Success Rates in Emerging Markets vs the UK

12:39 Why Bilateral Offtake Models Dominate Early-Stage BESS Markets

15:17 Why Long-Term Contracts Can Actually Help Battery Storage Bankability

16:05 Why Country Risk and OECD Classification Block Capital From Emerging BESS Markets

21:02 Can Emerging Markets Leapfrog to Grid 2.0? The Telco Analogy Explained

22:59 How to Build a Battery Storage Roadmap for a Nascent Grid: Lessons from Bangladesh

30:06 How to Avoid Grid Congestion When Scaling Renewables in Emerging Markets

32:17 Contrarian View: Should Merit Order Reform Unwind Legacy Thermal Contracts?

You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.