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Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the firm behind the Burj Khalifa, is working with Energy Vault on a proposed way to make future tall buildings store electricity using gravity. The plan is not to retrofit the Burj Khalifa: it is to integrate energy storage into towers that have yet to be designed and built. Energy Vault describes the concept as a hollow superstructure more than 300 meters tall and potentially as high as 1,000 meters, but its capacity and carbon-payback figures remain company targets rather than results from a completed skyscraper.
How would a gravity-powered skyscraper store renewable energy?
The basic idea is to use surplus electricity to lift heavy masses, then recover some of that energy when power is needed. In Energy Vault’s proposed EVu tower, a building-integrated gravity energy storage system would use the tower’s structure to house the lifting and generating equipment.
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- When electricity is available, motors use it to raise heavy concrete or composite masses.
- When electricity is needed, the masses descend through generators, converting some of their gravitational potential energy back into electricity.
Energy Vault’s existing EVx system uses a related principle with massive concrete blocks. TIME describes those blocks being raised to store energy and lowered to release it. The tower proposal applies the concept to a building’s structure; it does not mean that the building itself moves.
What are SOM and Energy Vault proposing?
In its May 30, 2024 announcement, Energy Vault described EVu as a hollow superstructure tower designed to integrate gravity storage at heights above 300 meters and up to 1,000 meters. The company says a tower could provide multi-gigawatt-hour storage for its host building and nearby buildings, and projects a carbon-payback period of three to four years. Those are design and company projections, not measured performance from a completed tower.
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SOM is named as the exclusive architect and structural engineer for the next generation of Energy Vault’s fixed-frame and deployable gravity energy storage structures. The partnership is led by SOM partners Adam Semel and Scott Duncan, together with structural engineer William F. Baker, who is associated with the Burj Khalifa’s structural design. That connection does not make the Burj Khalifa itself part of the proposal.
What has actually been built?
The strongest operating milestone in the announcement is for EVx, not for an EVu skyscraper. Energy Vault said on May 7, 2024, that it had successfully tested and commissioned its Rudong EVx system in China. The company rated the installation at 25 MW of power and 100 MWh of storage and described it as the world’s first commercial grid-scale gravity-storage system.
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A separate Energy Vault release dated February 29, 2024, said the Rudong system had connected to the local State Grid in December 2023. It also reported 3.7 GWh of announced projects in China, of which 468 MWh was under construction at that point. These figures describe the company’s projects and their status as reported on those dates; they are not evidence that gravity storage has been installed in a skyscraper.
How does the tower idea compare with batteries and pumped hydro?
The available figures do not provide a like-for-like technical comparison among EVu, lithium-ion storage and pumped hydro. The table separates the limited reported figures from points that have not been specified for the proposed tower.
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| Measure | EVu gravity-storage tower | Lithium-ion | Pumped hydro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Gulf News reported Energy Vault systems at about 5–10 cents per kWh and quoted a company goal below 5 cents per kWh over a project lifetime in 2024. These are dated estimates and a goal, not current verified EVu costs. | Gulf News cited a BloombergNEF estimate of about 13.5 cents per kWh in 2024. The comparison basis is not specified here. | Not stated in the cited material. |
| Round-trip efficiency | Not stated for EVu. | Not stated in the cited material. | Not stated in the cited material. |
| Storage duration | Not stated for EVu; the company claims multi-GWh capacity, not a specific discharge duration. | Not stated in the cited material. | Not stated in the cited material. |
| Degradation | Gravity storage avoids electrochemical degradation, but the tower announcement does not establish equipment lifetime or maintenance needs. | Not stated in the cited material. | Not stated in the cited material. |
| Site and structure | Designed to integrate storage into a future tower; the announcement does not give site-specific structural requirements. | Not stated in the cited material. | Not stated in the cited material. |
| Safety, carbon payback and delivery schedule | Energy Vault projects a three-to-four-year carbon payback. No comparative safety data or completed-tower schedule is provided. | Not stated in the cited material. | Not stated in the cited material. |
The table is not a technology ranking. A project’s delivered cost, efficiency, duration, safety and environmental impact depend on its design and location; the figures above do not establish which option would perform best for a particular building or grid.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What could make the concept useful—and what remains uncertain?
Potential advantages
- Storage built into a new development: Integrating storage into a tower’s design could serve the building and, according to Energy Vault, adjacent buildings as well.
- Structural materials: The approach uses heavy concrete or composite masses rather than relying on electrochemical storage cells.
- Different operating trade-offs: Because gravity storage does not rely on electrochemical reactions, it avoids electrochemical degradation. That alone does not establish its lifetime cost or maintenance requirements.
Practical hurdles
- Long project development: Independent reporting cited the time required to plan, permit and finance supertall buildings. Gulf News quoted analyst Thomas Boyes as saying mixed-use towers using the technology might be more likely in the 2030s.
- Unproven tower performance: The EVx commissioning milestone is relevant to the underlying storage approach, but it does not validate EVu’s proposed skyscraper scale, costs or carbon-payback target.
- Project economics: The 2024 cost figures are dated estimates for Energy Vault systems and a company goal. They are not a firm price for a building-integrated project.
- Design and permitting: A storage system inside a supertall building would need to be addressed as part of that building’s engineering and approvals. The announcement does not establish how a specific project would meet those requirements.
What “turning skyscrapers into batteries” means in practice
It means designing a future tower to include equipment that stores electricity by lifting and lowering heavy masses—not converting an existing landmark into a power plant. SOM’s role brings architecture and structural engineering into Energy Vault’s proposed building-integrated system, while EVx provides a separate commercial grid-scale milestone for related technology. The multi-GWh tower capacity, three-to-four-year carbon payback and eventual deployment remain projections until a tower is built and its performance is demonstrated.
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