Since February 2025, when the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration issued the "Notice on Deepening the Market-oriented Reform of New Energy Feed-in Tariffs to Promote High-quality Development of New Energy," explicitly abolishing the mandatory energy storage requirements for new energy projects, the national and local levels have successively introduced a series of new policies. China's new energy industry has ushered in an unprecedented "policy storm," which has also accelerated the transformation of the energy storage industry from "policy-driven" to "market-driven."

Following Document No. 136, local government policies in various provinces have shown the following trends. The forms of subsidies have become diversified, shifting from a single installation capacity subsidy to a combination of support measures such as discharge volume, capacity compensation, and virtual power plant incentives. The orientation towards marketization has been strengthened, with mechanisms like the electricity spot market and capacity leasing guiding energy storage to participate in flexible regulation. There is also differentiated support for technologies, with special support provided for long-duration energy storage technologies such as flow batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and compressed air.

On May 19, the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission issued the "Management Measures for Reward Funds for the Regulation Capacity of the New Power System in Shanghai." It rewards projects based on actual discharge volume. Projects that meet policy requirements can receive rewards for three consecutive years according to the first-year application standard, with an upper limit of 600 kWh per year for the discharge volume of each kilowatt-hour of energy storage capacity. The reward standards are 0.35 yuan/kWh for independent energy storage and 0.2 yuan/kWh for user-side energy storage, with a reward period of three years. The reward requirements and standards are shown in the table below:

For advanced technologies with a high proportion (including but not limited to solid-state batteries, flow batteries, and other advanced technologies with high safety and reliability), an additional one-time reward is given based on the investment in advanced technology equipment exceeding that of conventional lithium batteries by 40%. The upper limit for each project's reward is 50 million yuan. On March 12, the Inner Mongolia Energy Bureau issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Construction of New Energy Storage," stipulating that for the discharge volume of independent new energy storage stations included in the autonomous region's plan to the public grid, compensation will be implemented. The compensation standard is set annually, with the 2025 compensation standard being 0.35 yuan/kWh, and the implementation period is 10 years.

After the introduction of Document No. 136, so far, many provinces and regions across the country have issued energy storage subsidy policies for 2025, covering discharge subsidies, investment subsidies, and more. Among them, Zhejiang has a relatively high level of discharge subsidies, reaching up to 0.8 yuan/kWh.

The abolition of mandatory energy storage requirements is not a "hands-off" approach, but rather a way to unleash the intrinsic vitality of the energy storage market by removing administrative constraints. With the gradual introduction of detailed rules in various provinces, the reform of the new energy market will accelerate the transition from policy blueprints to practical implementation. From national contracts for differences to local cash rewards, from peak-valley arbitrage to capacity compensation, this "policy guidance + market-driven" virtuous development pattern is not only the result of technological progress but also an inevitable manifestation of the law of market economy. It marks a new stage in the modernization of China's energy system.

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