China has announced plans to speed-up development of new types of energy storage up to 2030, with a target of 300 million kilowatts of installed storage by 2030.

The plans, issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, were confirmed by China’s state Xinhua news agency on November 14.

New types of ESS facilities will need to have an average storage duration of about three hours, according to the plans, which also aim to shift the sector from large-scale expansion to market-driven growth.

According to Xinhua, new types of energy storage refer to energy storage technologies other than pumped-storage hydropower, mainly including electrochemical, compressed-air and gravity storage.

The plans call for new types of energy storage to participate fairly in electricity markets, and encourage renewable energy megabases equipped with storage to join cross-provincial power markets as a single entity.

In addition, the plans call for a refined pricing mechanism that reflects the value of stored power, with charging and discharging prices set through fair market trading.

Xinhua cited research from Huayuan Securities noting that the emphasis on market mechanisms comes as China’s power market increasingly matures. Investment in new types of energy storage was initially policy-driven, relying largely on mandatory deployment rules and subsidies, but the sector is now shifting toward market-based mechanisms.

Xu Dongjie, deputy chief engineer of the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute, said the 300-million-kilowatt target was a prudent, science-based minimum target that meets system needs and supports a reasonable rise in utilisation while giving the industry confidence and preventing investment-driven boom-and-bust cycles.

According to the National Energy Administration, China leads the world in new types of energy storage, with installed capacity accounting for around 40% of the global total. By the end of 2025, China had built and put into operation 136 million kilowatts of new types of energy storage, with average storage duration reaching 2.58 hours ― 0.3 hours longer than at the end of 2024.