The European Union (EU) has announced a tripartite agreement to accelerate energy storage deployments in the next two years.
This first-of-its-kind tripartite agreement will help create a favourable business environment for scaling up storage quickly and at scale across Europe, the European Commission said last week (26 June). It will help reduce system costs, ease energy price volatility and send a market signal to strengthen local manufacturing.
22 EU member states (out of 27) have committed to pledges for energy storage over the next two years, totalling 30-35GW of capacity, the Commission said. However, the actual Tripartite Agreement for Energy Storage document says the figure will be 45GW.
It is estimated that the EU needs around 200GW of storage capacity by 2030, compared with around 55GW installed at the beginning of this year.
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As part of the agreement, storage developers will provide yearly estimates of new project capacity while energy-consuming industries have committed to deploying storage on-site.
Member states meanwhile have committed to removing barriers that slow progress, and in some cases will provide financial support for deployments and manufacturing through national and EU funding.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, will support member states to create funding schemes for storage and decarbonising energy-intensive industry.
The aim is to better integrate renewables, reduce curtailment and lower prices. Specifically, it aims to reduce gas demand and ensure storage meets 10% of peak demand, up from 5% in 2025.
It also aims to increase the volumes of storage-tied power purchase agreements (PPAs) from 1.5GW in 2026 to 4.5GW in 2028.
In the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector, it aims to increase industrial thermal storage capacity from 0.5GWh in 2026 to 1.5GWh in 2028 and battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity from 9GWh to 24GWh.
However, it is not clear whether these are significantly higher than what is forecasted to come online anyway.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) said it will extending the €1.5 billion Grids manufacturing package for the European
supply chain to provide counter-guarantees also to manufacturers of storage components and support the development and manufacturing of storage technologies in the EU, through various equity and debt instruments.
Read the full tripartite agreement with all its details here.
Alexander Rangelov, CEO of Bulgaria-based BESS manufacturer IPS, signed the agreement alongside the Energy Ministers of the EU Member States and European Commissioner Dan Jørgensen, in a ceremony pictured above.
He commented on the agreement: “Its purpose is clear: to accelerate the deployment of energy storage across Europe, make the electricity system more secure and strengthen Europe’s own manufacturing capacity in this strategic sector.”
We interviewed Rangelov a year ago when IPS announced its new manufacturing facility, which has strategic status from the European Commission under the Net-Zero Industry Act.
