While a large portion of our thinking at the moment is shaped by a tiny but potentially deadly virus, we thought it might be preferable – for a few minutes at least – to think about a bigger picture topic: why battery energy storage and solar-plus-storage have become such a key part of the US energy industry in a way that they have not in Europe, as yet.
Corentin Baschet, an expert at technical consultancy and market analysis firm Clean Horizon is based in France and took some of our questions. We’ve already spoken with Baschet about the energy storage market in France, which, after the success of solar-plus-storage tenders on its island territories is deploying several large-scale batteries on its mainland in an experimental phase and has opened up a limited Capacity Market opportunity for low-carbon assets, including batteries.
France is also part of the European six nation shared frequency regulation market – which we heard more about from Corentin Baschet in our discussion of why energy storage deployment in Europe experienced a 2019 slowdown but is expected to bounce back and then continue to grow in the coming years. Of course, as we’ve seen in the past few months with COVID-19, everything can change rapidly, and in Europe the EU Clean Energy For All Europeans package could be an equivalent to a US Green New Deal in terms of overarching policy. For now, here’s what Corentin Baschet of Clean Horizon sees as as some of the main differences.
E-S.n: So, taking solar-plus-storage as a starting point, why hasn’t the US’ experience of year-on-year record deployments been enjoyed across the pond?
CB: The markets are fundamentally different. There’s a lot of frameworks to support that in the US, the investment tax credit (ITC), a whole lot of initiatives to support PV-plus-storage deployment which we don’t have in Europe. So it’s really driven by the incentives and the regulation in the US. Whereas in Europe it’s not really the case.
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