China's cumulative installed capacity of new-type energy storage is expected to exceed 370 gigawatts by 2030, according to the Energy Storage Industry Research White Paper 2026. 

The report, released at an energy storage expo in Beijing, said newly added installed capacity of new-type energy storage reached 66 gigawatts in 2025, up 51.9% year on year. Total installed capacity had already reached 136 gigawatts by the end of 2025, marking an 84% increase from the previous year and more than 40 times the level recorded at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

As the share of renewable energy continues to rise, demand for longer-duration storage is also increasing. "By 2030, the average duration of installed energy storage is expected to rise from 2.58 hours to 3.47 hours," said Chen Haisheng, head of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Experts say energy storage is playing an increasingly critical role in power system transformation. "The significance of energy storage for transforming the power system is revolutionary," said Liu Yafang in a previous interview with CGTN.

Liu, the former deputy director-general of China's National Energy Administration emphasized that new energy cannot enter the market without energy storage, and that it is impossible to generate revenue without energy storage.

Global energy storage deployment is also accelerating. According to the China Energy Storage Alliance DataLink database, the newly added storage capacity worldwide in 2025 exceeded 100 gigawatts for the first time, reaching 123.9 gigawatts, up 49.3% year on year. China's cumulative installed capacity of operational power storage projects reached 213.3 gigawatts by the end of 2025, accounting for 43.0% of the global total. 

From a regional perspective, China, the United States and Europe remain the three largest energy storage markets globally and continue to drive industry growth.

The white paper also noted that as the share of renewable power generation continues to increase, demand for long-duration regulation resources is becoming more urgent. By 2030, the average duration of new-type energy storage installations is expected to approach 3.5 hours, creating opportunities for the large-scale application of technologies such as flow batteries and compressed air energy storage. Analysts say this trend indicates that energy storage is shifting from a supporting role to becoming a fundamental component of the power system.