On 27 May 2025, over 200 participants attended the webinar on the "EASE Guidelines on Safety Best Practices for Battery Energy Storage Systems". The Guidelines are designed to support the safe deployment of outdoor, utility-scale lithium-ion (Li-ion) BESS across Europe.
July 2025 / Consultations & Advocacy
Guidance on Grid Connections
The European Commission launched a stakeholder consultation to gather input from stakeholders on its upcoming guidance regarding grid connections in situations where capacity constraints exist. In response, Energy Storage Europe Association submitted its feedback, emphasising the growing issue of speculative and stalled projects ("ghost" or "zombie" projects) hoarding grid capacity. These projects, often immature or inactive, prevent more viable and ready-to-build projects - particularly energy storage - from connecting to the grid, slowing down the clean energy transition.
Energy Storage Europe Association supports transitioning from a “first-come, first-served” approach to a “first-ready, first-served” model, prioritising projects based on objective maturity criteria like land rights, permits, and financial closure. To further improve grid access, Energy Storage Europe Association calls for:
Milestone-based progress tracking and a use-it-or-lose-it principle to clear inactive projects from the queue.
Greater flexibility for energy storage assets and simplified modification processes for existing connections when capacity doesn’t increase.
Transparent capacity maps and queue data to improve planning and investment.
Flexible Connection Agreements (FCAs) to enable connections in congested areas, provided they are fairly designed and backed by regulatory oversight.
Energy Storage Europe Association concludes that a smarter, more transparent, and storage-friendly grid connection framework is essential to accelerate Europe’s energy transition and optimise infrastructure use.
On 27 May 2025, over 200 participants attended the webinar on the "EASE Guidelines on Safety Best Practices for Battery Energy Storage Systems". The Guidelines are designed to support the safe deployment of outdoor, utility-scale lithium-ion (Li-ion) BESS across Europe.
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.
The 9.5 edition of the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage (EMMES) by the Energy Storage Europe Association and LCP Delta, is now available. The EU, UK, Norway, and Switzerland together are expected to reach 100 GW of installed energy storage in November 2025. This milestone represents enough capacity to meet the peak electricity demand of Germany and the Netherlands. With storage capacity forecast to grow by a further 115% by 2030, this will play a crucial role in Europe’s energy transition, creating more space for renewables on the grid.
