Electricity grids must feature prominently in Europe’s clean industrial deal CurrENT recommends
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Electricity grids are the backbone in Europe’s competitiveness, affordability and clean industrialisation, states industry association CurrENT in a new position paper.
Foreseeing the proposed clean industrial deal and other legislation – such as the new energy commissioner’s industrial electrification action plan – that has been tasked to the new term of the European Commission, CurrENT has set out a series of recommendations for policy makers for electricity grids to feature prominently.
Emphasising the urgent need for innovation, with both the wide-scale deployment of current technologies as well as the development of new transmission and distribution technologies, CurrENT is calling for a strategy for mass deployment of ‘innovative grid technologies’ in Europe.
Such technologies include grid enhancing technologies such as dynamic line rating and advanced power flow control, high capacity conductors, grid inertia measurement and flexibility management solutions.
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In an earlier study CurrENT found that by 2040, the deployment of these technologies could increase the overall network capacity between 20-40%.
Alongside this CurrENT is recommending in its position paper the introduction of specific and smart grid targets to measure whether Europe is on track to deliver the grids needed.
Examples could include decreasing the curtailment of renewables, decreasing the cost of grid capacity expansion in euros per GW-km, increasing grid capacity in GW-km, increasing the efficient use of the grid, reducing losses and decreasing raw materials per GW-km.
Then there is the need for financing mechanisms to be introduced to enable the mass deployment of these innovative grid technologies, such as benefit-sharing incentives that reward system operators for expanding their toolbox of technologies to save consumers money or guarantees that alleviate grid operator financial risks specific to trialling new technologies.
In particular, anticipatory investments that look at fully decarbonised scenarios and that are guided by the NOVA principle are recommended, i.e. prioritising the optimisation and reinforcement of the existing network over grid expansion, while promoting and demonstrating new high capacity and high efficiency conductor technology.
These recommendations give Europe a realistic chance to decarbonise the power system before 2040, which will be needed to reach net zero by 2050, states CurrENT, commenting that incremental investment decisions on a project-by-project basis will not lead to an optimal infrastructure.
Rather, Europe must look at what an optimal infrastructure in 2050 looks like and plan backwards from there.
The offshore network development plans are a start, but they do not yet deliver a shared vision for a system that is clean, secure and affordable. Moreover, they omit more than 80% of Europe’s 2050 electricity generation as they only cover offshore wind and do not consider what happens to the offshore power once it lands at the beaches of Europe, how it integrates with the onshore grid and ultimately reaches electricity consumers.
