European Parliament calls for a strategy on flexibility

Today in Strasbourg, the European parliament adopted two strategic texts for the future of grids and flexibility: the resolution on the Clean Industrial Deal, and the own-initiative report on electricity grids. With those texts, Members of the European Parliament call on the European Commission to put forward an EU strategy on energy flexibility. SolarPower Europe has issued the following statement in reaction.   

Arthur Daemers, Senior Policy Advisor at SolarPower Europe (he/him):   

“The European Parliament has sent a strong statement to the European Commission: you must do more on flexibility.

The Clean Industrial Deal focuses on many key areas: ramping up renewables, electrifying industry, building more electricity grids. But more work is needed to push storage and flexibility to the next level. 

We need a surge battery deployment now. In the continent as a whole, we must multiply our battery storage capacity 10x in 5 years. This will reduce volatility on energy markets, enable industrial decarbonisation through renewables, and strengthen Europe’s energy security by reducing dependence of volatile fossil imports and boosting affordable, domestically generated clean power.  

We hope that these two reports, adopted with wide majorities, will trigger action from the European Commission to incentivise the massive deployment of battery energy storage systems, hybrid renewable energy systems and demand-side flexibility. 

A swift implementation of key measures adopted via the recent Electricity Market Design revision is necessary but not enough. We need a new EU strategy on flexibility. ” 

Notes 
 

• The resolution and the own-initiative report are both non-binding texts. Through them, the European Parliament lists its priorities and calls on the European Commission to put forward new initiatives, including legislative ones where necessary.
   
• In the resolution on the Clean Industrial Deal, MEPs call for an “EU strategy on energy flexibility”. In the report on grids, MEPs call on the European Commission to put forward an “EU strategy to vastly reduce the dispatch-down of renewable electricity”. 
   
• The report on grids favours the move away from the ‘first-come-first-served’ principle in grid connection queues. They advise the European Commission to introduce transparent priority connection criteria, to be further defined by national governments. 
   
• The report on grids calls for including distribution grids inside the scope of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF-E), and to create an EU fund for decentralised and innovative grid projects. 
   
• The resolution on the Clean Industrial Deal calls for more support for clean tech manufacturing, as well as a new action plan on clean tech. 

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