The European Council has formally adopted the EU’s support package for its clean energy manufacturing industry, the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA), amidst mixed fortunes for local battery gigafactory projects.

Some of the current market prices for lithium-ion batteries are below cost and will not last forever but Europe still needs to be more cost-competitive, the CEO of one of Europe’s first large-scale manufacturing facilities told Energy-Storage.news.

We hear from renewables independent power producer (IPP) and energy trading firm Monsson about a recent BESS project in Romania which reportedly used nearly 100% European technologies.

Infrastructure investor InfraVia has bought a majority stake in Giga Storage, a Netherlands-headquartered BESS developer which is building a 2.4GWh project in Belgium.

Much more needs to be done to ensure that European countries create the right investment environment for flexibility resources in the electricity system, writes Eaton’s Siobahn Meikle.

New rules which will reduce grid fees in the Netherlands by providing ‘non-firm agreement’ (NFA) connections as well as time-weighted rates could improve returns and double projected BESS deployments, an analyst has said, though a project owner was less openly optimistic about it.

Europe appears to be slower and less bold than other markets like the US when it comes to financial support for upstream battery material projects like lithium refining, a company looking to invest half a billion euros in an EU project told Energy-Storage.news.

Large-scale long-duration energy storage (LDES) projects have been launched near Cyprus and in the UK, using technologies from BaroMar and RheEnergise that are an iteration of established LDES technologies.

The number of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies that will commercialise for applications beyond 24 hours ‘can be counted on one hand’, the CEO of compressed air energy storage (CAES) developer Corre Energy said in an interview.

Netherlands’ climate minister has allocated €100 million in subsidies to the deployment of ‘time-shifting’ battery storage with solar PV projects for next year, an acceleration of a larger €400 million-plus programme.