Electrification Action Plan Sets the Ambition – EU Now Needs Delivery Roadmaps, Including for Energy Storage

Energy Storage Europe (ESE) welcomes the European Commission's Electrification Action Plan as a major route towards a more competitive, resilient and affordable European economy. By setting a long-term direction for electrification and recognising the central role of flexibility, the Plan sends an important signal to investors, industry and energy consumers alike. However, the means of delivery will ultimately determine whether Europe can electrify its economy at the necessary pace.

ESE welcomes the Plan's recognition of energy storage as a key enabler of electrification, including the reference to the 200 GW storage objective under the Tripartite Agreement for Energy Storage, the stronger recognition of Thermal Energy Storage, and Long-Duration Energy Storage, the announcement of sector-specific electrification roadmaps, the confirmation of phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies, and the planned conference on Energy Storage. Together, these initiatives acknowledge that flexibility and storage will be indispensable to Europe's electrification journey.

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. 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.

As Europe electrifies its economy, energy storage must increasingly be recognised and supported as critical energy infrastructure. All storage solutions, including the least commercialised ones, will be needed to integrate renewables, strengthen energy security, reduce system costs and improve industrial competitiveness at pace and scale.

ESE also welcomes the proposed direction of the revised ETS Directive towards allocating more national ETS revenues to industrial decarbonisation. A meaningful share of this support should be accessible to storage solutions with clear eligibility criteria. ESE particularly welcomes the inclusion of battery and thermal storage among investments supported by the €100 billion Industrial Decarbonisation Bank and the €30 billion ETS Investment Booster. The explicit recognition of these storage technologies is an important step. ESE also welcomes the planned second industrial Heat Auction under the Innovation Fund in 2026 and calls for it to become recurrent, giving industrial electric and thermal-storage projects predictable access to capital support.

ESE particularly welcomes the explicit recognition of thermal energy storage and the inclusion of storage in future industrial decarbonisation funding, reflecting the growing role of affordable heat in Europe's clean industrial transition.

The Action Plan rightly recognises that electrification should lower energy costs. It should also enable consumers and industry to electrify to earn: by providing flexibility, participating in system services markets, and supporting a more resilient electricity system. Unlocking these value streams will be essential to making electrification projects economically attractive and bankable.

To achieve this, Europe now needs a clearer deployment pathway that matches long-term ambition with realistic timelines and targeted implementation. This should include structural measures to improve the competitiveness of electricity relative to fossil fuels, including by addressing the electricity-to-gas price ratio; targeted investment instruments that recognise storage as strategic infrastructure; faster permitting and grid connections procedures; and market frameworks that fully value flexibility and storage services. These measures should form part of a coherent roadmap that gives investors confidence and enables deployment at the pace required. Electrification should enable consumers not only to electrify to save, but increasingly to electrify to earn.

The Electrification Action Plan sets the right direction. Its success will now depend on translating political ambition into coordinated legislative, regulatory and investment actions that enable energy storage to be deployed at the speed and scale Europe's energy transition requires. The cost of delaying flexibility and storage deployment will be measured not only in higher system costs, but also in lost competitiveness, slower industrial electrification and a less resilient European energy system.