Governments should focus on mini-grids as a means to enabling access to reliable electricity for hundreds of millions of people that don’t yet have it and mini-grids using solar and batteries have matured as a technology class, but financing such projects remains problematic, a new report has found.

The global energy storage market will grow to a cumulative 942GW/2,857GWh capacity by 2040, attracting US$1.2 trillion in investment, caused by sharply decreasing battery costs, according to a Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) report.