EASE has responded to the European Commission's Public Consultation on 'Renewable Energy Projects - Permit-Granting Processes & Power Purchase Agreements . This initiative aims to facilitate renewable energy production projects. It will focus on the key barriers to implementing renewable energy projects and outline good practices addressing the identified barriers and good practices to facilitate power-purchase agreements, including across borders.
June 2022 / Reports and Studies
Energy Storage Targets 2030 and 2050
EASE has published an extensive review study for estimating Energy Storage Targets for 2030 and 2050which will drive thenecessary boost in storage deployment urgently needed today. Current market trajectories for storage deployment are significantly underestimating the system needs for energy storage. If we continue at historic deployment rates Europe will not be able to integrate the rapidly growing renewables and will fall short of its 2030 and 2050 climate targets.
In this report we highlight a number of areas in which storage needs are underestimated and find that many studies do not address all key energy storage technologies and durations, often undervaluing low emission technologies and energy shifting resources and overvaluing the use of fossil fuel plants especially in the 2030-time horizon. Furthermore, storage needs must be aligned with existing climate targets today especially as storage is a key enabler for the accelerated renewable buildout foreseen in Europe.
We account for these points in our target estimates for 2030 and 2050 and based on our analysis storage deployment needs to ramp-up to at least 14 GW/year in order to meet a target of approx. 200 GW by 2030.By 2050 at least 600 GW storage will be needed in the energy system, with over two-thirds of this being provided by energy shifting technologies (power-to-X-to-power). Our report is an important source of information for informing key assumptions for storage in future energy system planning.
Energy storage needs to become a political priority alongside renewables, without a parallel storage strategy and scaling up of market-ready energy storage technologies, the EU will be unable to achieve a net-zero power system, risking continued exposure to volatile fossil energy markets. We emphasisethese key priorities for storage:
A clear political commitment from the European Commission on an energy storage strategy including energy storage targets replicating in scope and ambition the Hydrogen strategy.
Promote the uptake of energy storage technologies, providing clear signals to investors and the energy storage industry to drive the necessary scale-up of storage solutions and a commitment to remove still existing barriers to their deployment and operation.
Mainstream energy storage in the European Commission’s implementation of the REPowerEU action plan and in the ongoing review of the Electricity Market Design.
EASE has responded to the European Commission's Public Consultation on 'Renewable Energy Projects - Permit-Granting Processes & Power Purchase Agreements . This initiative aims to facilitate renewable energy production projects. It will focus on the key barriers to implementing renewable energy projects and outline good practices addressing the identified barriers and good practices to facilitate power-purchase agreements, including across borders.
On 12 July 2022, over 180 participants attended the webinar on how much energy storage does Europe need. The webinar aimed to discuss the huge role energy storage has to play in the evolving energy system, and shed light on how much energy storage will be needed, building upon our estimates in the recently published EASE review paper ‘Energy Storage Targets 2030 and 2050’.
EASE has estimated that the European Union no-regret requirements for energy storage are 200 GW by 2030 and 600 GW by 2050. Current market trajectories for storage will fail to meet these requirements if urgent measures to boost deployment are not taken now. Yet, energy storage is an essential component for enabling renewables integration and establishing a secure, low-emission and affordable energy system.
EASE has prepared a general overview and the best practices across member states, when looking at the way forward for energy storage grid fees. Energy storage doesn’t receive the same treatment across the European Union as far as grid fees go: different technologies, different location (behind-the-meter vs front of the meter), have to face a variety of tariff structures, often not consistent with the EU-level rules as set by the Electricity Market Regulation.
The EASE Task Force on Multi-Services Business Cases for Energy Storage has prepared a report looking at the key role of energy storage as a Local Flexibility provider. This paper gives an overview of existing short-term local flexibility schemes in Europe today including Active-network management (ANM) and other flexibility services and their implications on the business case for energy storage.
