Energy Storage: a Crucial Technology in the Transition to a More Sustainable Energy System

The European Commission's Public Consultation on the electricity market design revision aims to review the current electricity market design and identify areas for improvement that could support the integration of renewable energy sources, while ensuring security of supply and keep prices affordable for consumers.

The Commission recognises that the electricity market design must adapt to accommodate the growing share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix, and to enable the integration of technologies able to provide flexibility and energy shifting, such as energy storage; at the same time, in the view of the geo-political developments of the past year, European policymakers and Member States felt the urgency to tie together the several emergency measures that have been published in order to protect consumers from supply disruption and high electricity prices, and to provide a coherent framework that could address these issues should they arise again in the future, without sacrificing decarbonisation efforts.

Energy storage is seen in the publication as a crucial technology in the transition to a more sustainable energy system: as the current electricity market design in Europe has not yet fully integrated energy storage, there is a need for a more comprehensive and flexible framework to enable its deployment. The Commission's public consultation aims to address this issue and explore ways to incentivise the deployment of energy storage. EASE ensured that its policy recommendations (as outlined in our recent position paper) to foster the business case and integration of energy storage are heard by the European Commission, and can become part of the upcoming Electricity Market Design proposal.