Since 2019, Spain has doubled its wind and solar capacity. These sources produce much cheaper power than fossil-fuel-fired plants. And more importantly: the energy is home-grown and safe from world leaders' mood swings.
To replicate Spain's success across Europe, massive upgrades are needed. And all stands and falls with our grids.
From centralised to decentralised
Electricity grids in Europe were built for the energy system of the “old days”: a single large coal- or gas-fired power plant generated electricity for thousands of households and businesses. The electricity travelled in one direction only – from the plant to consumers.
Loads of renewable sources mean the need for many small entry points to the grid to allow for efficient connections. “The logic is that if you connect multiple regions, countries with differing resources, some will have cheap hydro, cheap wind, cheap solar, or maybe more expensive generation,” Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford, explained to TEC.
“But if you connect them up, you have net economic gains because you can use that cheap electricity and transport it to a place where costs are high.”
In an “electrified Europe”, electricity doesn't move in a single direction as it used to be. Instead, you can store it, for instance in your EV's battery and feed it back into the grid when the production is lower.
Our grids aren't ready for that revolution yet and struggle to accommodate the many new renewable projects that are popping up across Europe.
A recent report revealed that 375 GW of renewable projects and 455 GW of battery storage projects (worth over €100 billion) are currently trapped in distribution grid queues across just eight European countries – that is much more than for instance the EU's current wind capacity of 236 GW.
So, what do we do?
To kickstart the grid revolution, the European Commission has put forward the Grids Package, now approved by the member states' ministers in the Council on Friday 26 June.
First, it aims to speed up permitting procedures to cut down the connection queues holding up projects. It pushes states to move from a “first comes first serve” queues, flooded with applications of projects which are in fact not ready yet, to a “first ready, first serve” principle.
“Today it takes easily five years, sometimes even a decade for wind turbine projects or solar projects to get connected to the grid. This should be no longer than six months in general and two years for complex examples,” the EU's energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen explained.
The Grids Package focuses on resolving the eight most significant bottlenecks across Europe. These projects should be “fast-tracked” through financial support and special political coordination.
“Right now, it's like we are trying to build a puzzle without anybody looking at the picture on the box,” Jørgensen explained. “It's a bit difficult. So maybe we should have that picture on the box so that we can build the most rational energy system.”
And... who pays?
But first, the rebuild needs to happen. Who pays for it is not entirely clear. Normally, grid infrastructure is mainly financed through fees within electricity bills. To take the extra burden off customers, the Commission is proposing new forms of funding and hopes to attract more private investment.
It also asked member states to contribute directly by giving part of the money from congestion fees collected by national network operators to support cross-border projects in Europe. This proposal got rejected in the Council, as Sweden, which makes a lot of money from these fees, opposed it strongly.
The Package will now go through the final round of negotiations in the European Parliament.
First step
Representatives from Eurelectric, the association representing the European electricity industry, believe the Package will be finalised and approved on EU level by the end of this year. The speed of implementation then depends a lot on the legal form it will take.
“If they go for a regulation, it would be more or less legally binding immediately. If they put it in a directive, then you have a transposition phase on the national level,” Oliver Franz, a regulatory expert, told TEC. “Then it might take another two years before you see some effect on the ground.”
The Oxford professor Rosenow agrees that the national actors will essentially decide whether the projects succeeds.
“Brussels can come up with very ambitious proposals and put all the right things in there, but if they're not transposed and implemented at national level, then we're not seeing things changing on the ground.”