“The next step is to translate these positive signals into concrete deployment measures. While sector-specific roadmaps are a good way to address the needs of individual industries, energy storage is different: it is a crosscutting enabling infrastructure underpinning electrification across buildings, transport, industry and grid,” it said.

“As the Commission develops these roadmaps, ESE encourages it to complement them with a European Energy Storage Deployment Roadmap, bringing together the targeted regulatory, market and investment actions needed to accelerate storage deployment in line with Europe’s electrification ambitions.”

See the trade body’s full statement here, while you can read the full PDF document of the EU’s Electrification Action Plan here.

The Plan is part of the EU’s efforts to make Europe a global leader in clean energy, lower consumer energy costs, and reduce its exposure to geopolitically-driven fossil fuel crises. As part of that an indicative electrification target of 46% by 2040 will now be assessed.

The Plan aims to address all the key barriers to large-scale electrification and decarbonisation, including grid, technologies failing to scale and lack of consumer incentives. That includes reducing the price gap between electricity and fossil fuel costs.

Energy Storage Europe welcomed this latter point and its associated proposal to avoid double network charging for energy storage (where it is charged as both a consumer and generator). That includes giving member states the power to reduce network charges for some groups.

“However, the principle must become a clear and enforceable rule for the member states,” it added.

Double charging is a key barrier, and the potential lifting of an exemption for storage in Germany nearly scuppered the market entirely recently.

All this follows the first EU tripartite agreement on storage in late June, which said 30-35GW of storage should be deployed by 2028.

It’s been a busy week for the large-scale energy storage market in Poland, with projects moved to construction and delivery by EDF Power Solutions & Eurus Energy Europe, Eiffel Investment Group & Ergy, R.Power Renewables, and EDP.

In this news roundup, Grenergy, MaxSolar and Saft, and Amarenco have made significant advancements on BESS projects in Spain, Germany, and France.

Germany will have its first capacity market (CM) auction in September this year, following confirmation from the country’s energy regulator.

Spain has awarded €165 million to seven pumped hydro storage projects totalling around 2.1GW/21GWh, while Portugal has set a target of 1.4GW of new pumped hydro capacity by 2040.

Activity in Italy’s grid-scale market is accelerating, with Sonnedix and the Strioga Family Foundation acquiring projects totalling over 1GWh combined, while BNZ and RWE have ordered BESS from Sungrow and LONGi respectively totalling 540MWh.