The bill to get power grids ready for renewables? $1.4 trillion a year
afr.comLondon | The need to build huge amounts of extra electricity transmission capacity worldwide is threatening to become a serious bottleneck in many countries’ push towards renewable energy, consultancy firm BCG has warned.
In a report released on Wednesday, BCG said the scale of investment needed in electricity grids – up to $US900 billion ($1.4 trillion) a year – could be almost as much as the capital needed to actually build the solar and wind generation capacity.
Grids worldwide will need up to $US900 billion of investment — much the same capital requirement as renewable energy generation. Bloomberg
If that capital cannot be found, offshore wind and solar generators might be unable to connect to the grid, leaving the projects stranded.
“If you don’t get the scale-up of the grid, you will be blocking renewable capacity. In the UK, for example, we have 220 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity awaiting connection,” said Maurice Berns, chairman of BCG’s Centre for Energy Impact in London.
A second risk is that even if the connection is there, the grid might lack the capacity to absorb the generators’ output.
“One of the big concerns we’ve heard from our clients is that they build a lot of wind capacity in the North Sea, they connect it to the land in the North Sea countries like Germany or the Netherlands or Belgium, and then the offtake capacity of the grids in those countries isn’t ready to accept that additional level of power.”
BCG’s report estimated that developing enough solar and wind energy generation to get to net-zero would need an average annual investment of $US650 billion to $US950 billion, for a total of $US20 trillion to $US30 trillion by 2050.
The global electricity grid, meanwhile, would require average
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