The Guardian: Energy storage boom stalls in Europe

Europe’s energy storage boom stalled last year due to a slowdown in large-scale schemes designed to store clean electricity from major renewable energy projects, according to the European Association for Storage of Energy (Ease).

A new study by consultants Delta-EE for Ease found that the European market grew by a total of 1 gigawatt-hours in 2019, a significant slowdown compared with 2018, when the energy storage market exceeded expectations to grow by 1.47GWh.

The slowdown in 2019 has emerged amid rising concern that the outbreak of the coronavirus may stall the rollout of clean energy technologies in 2020, dealing a double blow to the clean energy industry.

These large, utility-scale projects often require planning permission, government financial support or procurement tenders to move ahead. Meanwhile, the rollout of home battery kits, which relies far less on policy support, remained a fast-growing market.

Patrick Clerens, the Ease secretary general , said: “The message is clear: even if energy storage is a key enabler of the energy transition and clearly seen as a major tool to achieve the emissions targets linked to the Paris agreement, more support is needed.”

The report expects the EU’s clean energy package, which has legislated support for clean energy technologies, to be key to creating a framework for investing in energy storage.

Clerens said the package was “an important step” which should allow energy storage “to reach its full potential fast”.

However, the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus is likely to delay policies supporting clean energy technologies as well as hit the supply chain which could see the rate of battery installations fall by 4% globally, according to a recent report by BloombergNEF (BNEF).

More detailed article is here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/23/energy-storage-boom-stalls-in-europe

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