Skip to main content

The Guardian: Energy storage boom stalls in Europe


The Guardian:  Energy storage boom stalls in Europe

wind turbine surrounded by grass
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).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Italy: Firms shake lockdown using shortcut in coronavirus law

Italy: Firms shake lockdown using shortcut in coronavirus law The government last week extended non-essential business closures to May 3. But more than 100,000 mainly small- and medium-sized companies have applied to keep going or partially reopen. In principle, a key hurdle for companies to do business should be that they can prove they are part of a supply chain to businesses that are deemed “essential” in a government decree, such as food, energy or pharmaceutical companies. But the government, facing a backlog of applications, has clarified Italy’s lockdown laws to say no companies need to wait for government approval to go ahead. More than 105,000 firms have applied to be considered part of essential supply chains, the interior minister said on Wednesday, in a guideline on its website to clarify the lockdown rules. Of those, just over 2,000 have been turned down and told to suspend their business. More than 38,000 are being investigated and the rest are waiting to be...
Post a Comment
Read more

Italy’s small businesses scrap for survival

Italy’s small businesses scrap for survival Three years ago, this owner of a small business in Italy’s industrial Veneto region lost his life savings, when two regional banks failed after the European debt crisis and were wound down, wiping out shareholders. Today, he is struggling with a new torment: the outbreak of coronavirus in northern Italy that has devastated lives and shut businesses across the region since mid-March. His company’s revenues have dried up even as his overheads remain unchanged. “I am scared for the future,” he said. Many companies rely on local banks for funds and do not have bonds or investors to draw on Northern Italy is home to more than 2m businesses, according to Prometeia, a research and consulting firm. Lombardy, the region around Milan that has been in lockdown since mid-March, has more than 900,000 of them. Andrea Guerra, a former chief executive of Italian eyewear multinational Luxottica and government adviser who is advising small bus...
Post a Comment
Read more

thechronicleherald.ca: France to tighten controls on non-EU foreign investment

thechronicleherald.ca: France to tighten controls on non-EU foreign investment Currently non-European investments in French companies do not need government approval as long as the stake is 25% or less. PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will tighten restrictions on foreign investments from outside Europe in French companies to limit foreign control over strategic sectors and technologies, the finance minister said on Wednesday. The government already at the start of the year tightened controls on non-European foreign investments, in particular by lowering the threshold for state-vetting to 25% from 33% previously. Le Maire also said that he would add biotechnology companies to a list of sectors that requires government approval for an investment from outside Europe to go ahead. "In this period of crisis, some companies are vulnerable, some technologies are fragile and could be bought by foreign competitors at a low cost. I won't let it happen," Le Mai...
Post a Comment
Read more