Energy Storage: A Key Enabler for the Decarbonisation of the Transport Sector

On 19 February 2019 the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) published a position paper explaining the crucial role of stationary energy storage in enabling a rapid and effective transition to a decarbonised transport sector. It calls on policymakers and other stakeholders to address the barriers that hamper the uptake of storage and to enable relevant use cases.

EASE argues that by coupling the energy and transport sectors, energy storage technologies can play an important role in reducing the costs of widespread EV roll-out and relieving the stress that would be placed on the electricity system as a result, while enabling the transition to a decarbonised transport sector.

EASE has found that the role of energy storage in this context is often not reflected adequately, although sustainable mobility has become a prominent topic, especially with the ongoing discussions on the 2050 Long-Term Strategy for GHG Emissions Reductions.

In its paper, EASE identifies several barriers, including:

• The lack of provisions in the EU regulatory framework that explicitly enable electric vehicle (EV) batteries to be repurposed for second use applications.
• Economic roadblocks such as energy tariffs, pricing structures or barriers to access energy and ancillary markets, preventing a wider roll-out of storage for charging infrastructure and the provision of vehicle-to-grid services.

Overcoming these barriers would empower three different use cases for energy storage and transport, thereby providing unique and diverse benefits for consumers, market players developing charging infrastructure, system operators, and the broader energy system:

• Repurposing EV batteries to give them a second life in other applications.
• Deploying stationary energy storage to support (fast) charging infrastructures.
• Facilitating vehicle-to-grid integration through smart charging and vehicle-to-grid services.

Addressing a rapid decarbonisation in the transport sector is key, because it is the only sector in which greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have risen in the EU since 1990. To meet its decarbonisation goals, EU policymakers are therefore seeking to achieve a rapid electrification of the transport sector with the use of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) fuelled by high shares of renewables.