The European Commission has recently launched a stakeholder consultation on its upcoming guidance regarding grid connections in situations where capacity constraints exist. In response, Energy Storage Europe Association urged reforms to tackle stalled “ghost” projects blocking viable energy storage. Key recommendations include a “first-ready, first-served” model, transparent grid data, and more flexible rules to accelerate the clean energy transition.
August 2025 / Consultations & Advocacy
Reply to Public Consultation on European Grids Package
Energy Storage Europe Association welcomes the European Commission’s efforts to modernise the EU grid regulatory framework through the European Grids Package. As Europe moves toward an increasingly decentralised, electrified, and decarbonised energy system, the role of flexibility - particularly energy storage - must be central in both policy and grid planning. While the regulatory framework has evolved, significant gaps remain in how flexibility needs are systematically assessed, planned for, and integrated across both transmission and distribution levels.
Despite recent initiatives, the current framework is not yet sufficient to ensure that flexibility - including demand response, storage, and digital grid solutions - is fully considered as an alternative or complement to traditional grid reinforcements. National and EU-level network development plans often lack requirements to assess flexibility options or to compare their costs and benefits against conventional investments. Storage continues to be undervalued and underutilised, even though it can deliver congestion relief, balancing, and grid deferral services with greater speed and lower environmental impact.
Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are versatile assets capable of delivering multiple grid services from a single installation. Beyond demand shifting and renewable integration, ESS can provide synthetic inertia via grid-forming inverters, voltage control, and black start capabilities - functions traditionally covered by separate assets like synchronous condensers. To ensure a cost-effective and resilient grid, TSOs should be encouraged to fully consider the multi-service capabilities of ESS. Policy guidance may be needed to address existing biases toward conventional assets and to support the validation and integration of battery-based solutions for grid stability.
To close these gaps, Energy Storage Europe Association calls for clearer guidance and obligations on flexibility assessments in planning processes, with common methodologies and better DSO-TSO coordination and better grid connection procedures as well. Storage should be considered as a standard resource for grid services, and be reflected accordingly in system planning, cost-benefit analysis, and network development scenarios.
The European Commission has recently launched a stakeholder consultation on its upcoming guidance regarding grid connections in situations where capacity constraints exist. In response, Energy Storage Europe Association urged reforms to tackle stalled “ghost” projects blocking viable energy storage. Key recommendations include a “first-ready, first-served” model, transparent grid data, and more flexible rules to accelerate the clean energy transition.
This position paper, prepared by the Energy Storage Europe Association, assesses the system value of long-duration energy storage, identifies barriers to deployment, and proposes recommendations to better align European energy, industrial, and financing frameworks with the long-term flexibility needs of a fully decarbonised power system.
In this position paper, the Energy Storage Europe Association calls for a shift from today’s “first-come, first-served” queue system to a more efficient, strategic, and transparent framework that recognises the unique value of energy storage for reducing congestion, enhancing flexibility, and making better use of existing grid infrastructure.
Energy Storage Europe Association has published its Position Paper on Improving Permitting Procedures, highlighting the urgent need to streamline, harmonise, and modernise permitting frameworks for energy storage across the EU. Europe needs a fast, fair, and future-proof permitting framework to unlock the estimated 200 GW of energy storage required by 2030.
Energy Storage Europe Association responds to the European Commission’s Public Consultations on the Electrification Action Plan and the Heating and Cooling Strategy, highlighting the need for stronger recognition of storage as a central enabler of electrification and heating decarbonisation. This requires clearer policies to integrate storage into planning and investment pathways, along with measures to remove persistent barriers such as high upfront costs, slow permitting, unfavourable taxation, and weak market signals. Storage should be treated as a default element of a cost-effective, system-friendly transition and reflected accordingly in planning frameworks, financing tools, and flexibility market design.
