Trade association Energy Storage Europe (ESE) has welcomed proposed reforms to European Union (EU) grid connection and permitting processes.
The European Commission (EC) presented the European Grids Package on Friday (12 December), part of its efforts to adapt the electricity grid networks to a more decentralised, digital and flexible electricity system.
The EC said the EU has “found itself at a critical crossroads due to unprecedented global geopolitical shifts and trade fluctuations” in recent years, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighting the importance of energy security and competitiveness.
In 2022, 70% of the energy used in the EU came from fossil fuels, 98% of which was imported oil and gas. Last year, Member States spent around €375 billion (US$440.21 billion) on these imports. By contrast, European countries invested only US$117 billion in renewable energy and grid infrastructure, compared to US$327 billion spent by China, while European industrial electricity prices are, on average, double those of the US.
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The plan proposed last week aims to enhance the cross-border sharing of energy between EU Member States and expedite the grid connection and permitting bottlenecks that hinder large-scale infrastructure projects, including energy storage.
The package included guidance on efficient grid connections and contracts for difference (CfDs), proposals to revise the EU directive on permit-granting for infrastructure projects and proposals to revise Trans-European Networks for Energy (TEN-E) planning legislation.
New Grid Connection Guidance includes specific consideration of energy storage assets for the first time, including co-located renewable energy-plus-storage plants. Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of solar trade group SolarPower Europe, said the guidance was “the highlight of the package,” as reported by sister site PV Tech.
Energy Storage Europe (ESE), until recently called European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), has been advocating for grid connection reforms along the lines of what has been proposed by the EC for some time.
In November, ESE and its research partner LCP Delta said Europe was closing in on its first 100GW of cumulative energy storage installations across all technologies, forecasting 115% growth in deployments by 2030. Despite this rapid growth, ESE and LCP Delta advocated for stronger policies that can keep developers and investors engaged.
Bringing wait times down from seven years to six months
The EC suggested a move from a ‘first-come-first-served’ model for grid connections to ‘first-ready-first-served’, a similar move to what UK regulator Ofgem has just enacted, and ESE senior policy officer Daniel Vig said this “will accelerate the deployment of mature assets and improve network efficiency”.
Vig said that proposals on queue reform, flexible connection agreements (where resources are counted as grid-connected only while they interact with the grid) and recognition of the system benefits of energy storage were closely aligned with a position paper on grid connections that the trade association published recently.
“Grid connection priority must be given to projects that address crucial system needs, e.g. congestion relief or curtailment minimisation. Energy storage technologies are uniquely positioned to offer these benefits to the grid,” Vig said.
ESE also welcomed new, shorter permitting deadlines in the directive, which would be a maximum of six months for standalone energy storage above 100kW—excluding hydrogen—and up to two years for pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).
Vig said this move would be “essential to shortening procedures that today can take as long as seven years”.
The EC has proposed treating energy storage resources, whether standalone or paired with generation, as projects that benefit from the overriding public interest presumption. This, according to the ESE policy expert, “further underlines the storage sector’s critical role in delivering system flexibility and security”.
The EU is, at the same time, proposing to support eight so-called Energy Highways projects, which are specific initiatives aimed at increasing cross-border transmission and storage of energy.
Reforms to TEN-E include a “gap-filling process” to identify and address gaps in cross-border electricity transmission planning that national regulators lack the jurisdiction to address.
The EC said that TEN-E, introduced in 2013, has contributed to core policy objectives and remains “largely valid”. However, several shortcomings must be addressed “to ensure the framework is fit to support a decarbonised, competitive and resilient energy system towards 2050, in line with the Clean Industrial Deal objectives and the European Climate Law”.
The role of TEN-E includes identifying projects of common interest (PCIs), and although Energy Storage Europe welcomed a proposed revision that non-wires and flexibility solutions for networks should be reflected in network development plans and cost-benefit analyses, Vig said that it is still difficult for energy storage projects to achieve PCI status.
This is because, Vig said, while there is no specific minimum size threshold for energy storage projects to qualify, the cost-benefit analysis methodology for a previous Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP) by the ENTSO-E association of network operators showed that projects would need to be about 225MW to be considered.
The new proposal makes no changes that would alter the size thresholds for energy storage PCIs, which Vig said remains “prohibitively high”. At the same time, there is “still no tailored methodology to value storage’s cross-border system benefits,” Vig said.
Energy-Storage.news publisher Solar Media is hosting the Energy Storage Summit EU 2026 in London, UK, on 24-25 February 2026 at the InterContinental London – The O2. See the official website for more details, including agenda and speaker lists.
