Energy Storage Europe Welcomes the EU Tripartite Agreement on Energy Storage and Calls for Strategic EU Actions to Accelerate Deployment

Statement by Patrick Clerens, Secretary General of Energy Storage Europe:

“Today’s Tripartite Agreement for Energy Storage is the most comprehensive political recognition of energy storage at EU level to date. For the first time, the European Commission, Member States, financial institutions and industry are brought together around a common short-term agenda for storage deployment.

This matters, especially because energy storage became central to the strategic equation building the European strategic autonomy is presenting. Storage has moved well beyond a technical question or an add-on to renewables. It is strategic infrastructure: enabling the clean-energy transition, supporting the digital transition, strengthening industrial competitiveness and reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and external energy shocks. It is also an industrial opportunity for Europe.

The Agreement gives the sector and public authorities a stronger basis to drive implementation over the next two years.

Yet the fact remains – storage still faces fragmented rules across electricity markets, grid connection, tariffs, permitting and finance. Existing EU funding instruments do not yet provide a genuine level playing field for storage, including where it is essential to wider decarbonisation, electrification and resilience projects. This must change.

The sector is therefore calling for a set of Strategic EU Actions to Accelerate the Deployment of Energy Storage. Building Europe's energy autonomy will require a coordinated programme of regulatory, financial and industrial measures that remove the barriers to deploying storage at the speed and scale Europe requires. This should include targeted actions wherever flexibility becomes a strategic enabler, including the sustainable integration of data centres.

A central part of this future effort must be a clear definition of energy storage operators, applied consistently across the EU legal and financial framework. EU needs such a definition, so that energy storage operators can be properly recognised, regulated and financed.

Energy Storage Europe stands ready to support delivery of this Agreement and to work with the Commission, Member States, financial institutions and industry partners on the strategic roadmap that must follow.”