The European Commission has signed tripartite agreements with energy storage and renewable energy developers, with financial institutions, and with industrial consumers on energy storage, aiming to accelerate the deployment of storage in the short term.
The EU is estimated to require around 200 GW of storage capacity by 2030, compared to 55 GW currently. As part of the agreement, 22 EU Member States have committed to ambitious pledges for energy storage over the next two years, account to between 30-35 GW of storage capacity. These MS will remove barriers to energy storage deployment and support the conclusion of PPAs with storage assets and other long term contracts; they will also support storage deployment and manufacturing in line with State aid rules, such as the Clean Industrial State Aid Framework (CISAF).
The agreements aim at boosting the annual storage deployment by at least 20% compared to the annual capacity installed in 2025 (around 12 GW), corresponding to around 45 GW of energy storage to be installed between 2026 and 2028. They aim at fostering electrification and competitiveness in the industry and business sectors, raising the volume of PPAs with storage assets from 1.5 GW in 2026 to 4.5 GW in 2028, tripling the industrial thermal storage capacity in the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector to 1.5 GWh in 2028, raising the share of storage installations co-located with renewables in the C&I sector from 5% in 2026 to 2028 in 2028, and nearly tripling battery installations in this C&I sector, from 9 GWh in 2026 to 24 GWh in 2028.
In addition, the European Council has approved the European grids package, comprising a revision of the trans-European energy infrastructure (TEN-E) regulation and a permitting directive. The package aims at fast-tracking permitting and enhancing interconnections, supporting a common framework for network development planning across the electricity, hydrogen and gas sectors. The Council will now start negotiations with the European Parliament, in order to reach a final agreement on the legislation as soon as possible in 2026.
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