European Parliament Working on a Regulatory Framework for Storage from Start to End

As the clean energy transition and climate goals are on the top list of policies in the European Union, energy storage is gaining momentum across various initiatives from the European Parliament. EASE is pleased to see that European Parliament considers energy storage as the key enabler for energy transition and has taken many steps to make sure that energy storage will be included in the policies and regulatory framework for the clean energy transition.

How it all started

In the end of 2019, the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee started preparing an own-initiative report on energy storage. EASE, as the voice of the energy storage sector was happy to share its inputs and knowledge of the current state of play, opportunities and barriers for energy storage.

The report, called “A comprehensive European Approach to Energy Storage”, was adopted with an overwhelming majority in the plenary on 10 July 2020 with 556 votes in favour, 22 against and 110 abstentions and it provides a comprehensive analysis of the solutions that EASE consider essential for the integration of renewables and for transitioning to an energy system in which people will have both clean energy and security of supply.

Key takeaways from the report:

• to ensure a level playing field for all energy storage solutions, the report has taken a technology neutral approach, to allow market forces to foster innovation and to drive the choice of technology;
• the European Parliament calls on the European Commission to develop a comprehensive strategy on energy storage covering all technologies;
• more specifically the report calls for regulatory barriers such as double taxation of electricity to be removed and technological advancements to be followed by legislation;
• it also focuses on what energy storage can do at the citizen and community level and calls on Member States to support citizen’s participation in the energy system and to remove those obstacles that prevent consumers from self-generating electricity or from consuming or storing self-generated electricity or selling it on the market.

Energy storage getting the stage

In the beginning of September EASE held a webinar to introduce the European Parliament’s own-initiative report on energy storage. The webinar gave valuable insights into the work behind the report from the perspective of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who led the drafting of the report: Claudia Gamon (rapporteur, Renew Europe), Maria Spyraki (shadow-rapporteur, EPP), Ville Niinistö (shadow-rapporteur, Greens/EFA), and Niels Fuglsang (shadow-rapporteur, S&D). All the MEPs highlighted that energy storage should be a key topic of energy policy. MEP Claudia Gamon underlined that the main message on this topic to the European Commission is that the European Parliament is ready to work on a good regulatory framework that covers energy storage from start to finish, finding practical solutions to support today’s technologies, to exploit their full potential, and to pave the way for the technologies of the future.

To create a platform for exchange among legislators and policymakers the discussions where summed up with remarks on the European Commission’s vision and policies on the role of energy storage in the energy transition. Mr Tudor Constantinescu, Principal Adviser to the Director General for Energy welcomed the European Parliament’s report and noted that as many of the policy points for energy storage are in the Clean Energy Package, the regulatory package has paved the way for storage to be more visible and included to the energy policy discussions but more must be done to ensure that energy storage can reach its full potential as an essential driver of the energy system.

The webinar was attended by more than 200 participants around Europe which shows that energy storage is one of the hot topics and creating a platform for discussion for legislators, policy makers and storage sector is crucial for raising awareness about the many benefits that energy storage can provide to enable energy storage to reach its full potential.

What to expect next

Following the own-initiative report on energy storage, the European Parliament’s ITRE Committee is now preparing two new own-initiative reports on recent European Commission communications, namely the Hydrogen Strategy and Energy Sector Integration Strategy.

EASE is happy to be working with the European Parliament to share the energy storage sector input and knowledge and welcomes the many active steps from European Parliament to include energy storage in the clean energy transition policies and legislative files.