Europe’s $2 Trillion Energy Reality Check
Tsvetana Paraskova

Last week’s worst blackout Europe has ever seen in modern times was a wake-up call for the EU – and the rest of the world – that regardless of booming renewable energy capacity installations, power supply will not be secure unless grids are capable and flexible enough to accommodate clean energy and meet rising demand.  

Renewable energy proponents have been touting for years the record-breaking solar and wind capacity additions in Europe and elsewhere, calling at the same time for more investments in grids. With headline-grabbing record renewable installations and reduction of dependence on fossil fuels, the need for trillions of dollars worth of investment in grids may have been overlooked. Until it was too late and Spain’s grid buckled on April 28, leaving the country, most of Portugal, and, for shorter periods of time, parts of France, without electricity and basically ruining (even more) an entire Monday for millions of people. 

Investigations continue into what happened and why Spain’s transmission system was disconnected from the European grid midday Monday.

Whatever the cause, the worst blackout in Europe and the first major system collapse in the era of booming renewable energy installations highlighted the need for investments in storage and grid resilience.

Grid Investments Lag Behind Renewables Additions  

While focusing on boosting solar and wind power and their benefit for the environment and the reduction of imports of fossil fuels, policymakers are aware that booming renewable capacity generation needs to have access to the power systems. But investments aren’t enough. If electricity transmission, distribution, and interconnections cannot handle power from the record-breaking solar and wind capacity, the clean energy progress stalls.

As early as last year, think tank Ember said in a report that grid investments in Europe are lagging behind renewable additions and a lack of transmission capacity could hold back the energy transition.

“Making sure solar and wind can actually connect to the system is as critical as the panels and turbines themselves,” says Elisabeth Cremona, Energy & Climate Data Analyst at Ember.

“There is no transition without transmission.”

Europe needs to significantly boost grid investments and fully align planning processes with the new reality of the energy transition, according to the clean energy think tank.

At a global level, the situation is pretty much the same—the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that thousands of gigawatts of renewable energy are waiting in grid connection queues.

“This shows grids are becoming a bottleneck for transitions to net zero emissions,” the IEA said, noting that booming investments in renewables contrast with barely changed spending on grid resilience and expansions that have been static at about $300 billion per year over the past decade.

EU Needs Up to $2.6 Trillion in Grid Investment by 2050 

That’s too little to support grids that support the rollout of more renewable energy.

The European Commission has estimated that $2.265 trillion (2 trillion euros) to $2.6 trillion (2.3 trillion euros) is required to meet grid needs until 2050, a review of the EU’s electricity grids by the European Court of Auditors showed earlier this year.

“Success hinges on overcoming key challenges, including coordinating grid planning across the EU, streamlining permitting processes and tackling equipment and labour shortages,” the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said in the report.

“A large part of the EU electricity grid dates from the last century: almost half of distribution lines are over 40 years old,” said Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, the ECA Member responsible for this review.

“To ensure the EU’s competitiveness and autonomy, we need modern infrastructure that can support our industry and keep prices affordable.”

This decade alone, the EU needs a cumulative $660 billion (584 billion euros) in grid investments, the Commission estimated in its ‘Grids, the missing link - An EU Action Plan for Grids’.

This “missing link” between the renewables boom and the connection and transmission of clean energy to consumers, as well as the need for much higher investments in battery storage, came to the forefront of the green energy debate after the massive power outage in Spain last week.

Delays in grid development have created a backlog of over 800 GW of wind and solar capacity awaiting connection in Europe, nearly double the current supply, Allianz Research said a month and a half before Europe’s worst blackout.

Moreover, the lack of grid flexibility exacerbates intraday price volatility, with high electricity prices during peak demand and negative prices during off-peak hours, according to Allianz’s analysts.

The EU also needs to improve cross-border electricity interconnections to make grids more flexible and allow countries to import electricity from neighbors when needed. The EU has bumped its interconnection target to?at least 15% by 2030, up from a previous 10% target. This means that an EU member state should be able to import up to 15% of the electricity it consumes from one or more of its neighbors.

By the beginning of 2025, a total of 14 out of the 27 EU countries had exceeded the 2030 target and 5 countries were above the 10% threshold, while 8 countries were still below the previous target from 2020.

“If finished on time, the interconnection projects in the pipeline are expected to further improve interconnectivity levels, but more interconnections are needed in some regions, particularly in view of increasing renewable generation capacities,” the EU says.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Tsvetana is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

oilprice.com