Electricity grids that also include storage for power sourced from renewable resources could cut carbon dioxide emissions substantially more than systems that simply increase renewably sourced power, a new study has found.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that storage could help make more efficient use of power generated by sources such as wind and solar and could help power grids move away from relying on fossil fuels for energy.

The study by researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Michigan was among the first of its kind to evaluate the role energy storage might play in making renewable resources more reliable on a grid-wide basis.

The researchers looked at the power grids in California and Texas, then modeled the ways in which energy storage might make better use of energy from renewable sources. They also looked at the ways in which storing energy from renewable sources might affect the amount of carbon dioxide the energy grid adds to the atmosphere.

They found that in California, without energy storage, one-third of the renewable energy could be lost or never collected in the first place. Adding energy storage technologies could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 90 percent.

Under the study’s models, storing energy from renewable sources also made the system more efficient. The researchers found that roughly 9 percent of renewable energy was lost.

In Texas, the researchers found that adding energy storage to the grid could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 57 percent. Under that model, around 0.3 percent of the renewable energy in Texas’s system would be lost.

The research could lead to future studies on how to further reduce or eliminate altogether fossil-fuel sources from the energy grid. Future models could predict what might happen to fossil fuel emissions if a state or country combined a greater investment in renewable energy sources with different energy storage solutions and policies like carbon taxes.