According to the latest research by the International Energy Agency (IEA), as the world accelerates the transition to clean energy, investment in green technologies such as solar, wind and electric vehicles continues to rise, while the modernization of the power grid for supporting services has encountered the problems of insufficient investment and backward construction.
IEA Administrator Fatih Birol said bluntly: "Countries are considering new renewable energy plants, but they are not paying the same attention to building grids. It's like when we focus on making cars that are as fast and beautiful as possible, but we forget about building roads. ”
Slow expansion is a drag on decarbonization.
According to the IEA, by 2040, the length of transmission lines that must be added or replaced is equivalent to the total length of existing grid lines around the world in order to meet national climate goals without compromising energy security. Based on this, by 2030, the world will need to invest more than $600 billion per year in the grid to significantly expand the scale of transmission lines, which is about twice the current level of global investment in transmission lines.
If grid expansion is slow, i.e. in the IEA "grid delay" scenario, the world will emit an additional nearly 60 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2030 and 2050, equivalent to the total emissions of the global power sector over the past four years. In this scenario, the probability of an average global temperature exceeding 2 degrees Celsius rises to 40 percent by 2050.
The reality is that, with the exception of China, most countries have seen a continuous downward trend in investment in power infrastructure such as power grids and transmission lines, mainly due to cumbersome project approval processes and long construction times, the IEA said.
It is understood that the transmission line project takes an average of 5-15 years from planning, approval, permitting, construction and completion;In comparison, renewable energy projects take an average of 1-5 years, while EV charging infrastructure projects take less than 2 years. Therefore, it is imperative to invest in the renewal and expansion of transmission lines.
The New York Times writes that the power grid is a hidden weak point in the global decarbonization process, and even if technologies such as solar, wind, and electric vehicles are widely available, countries are lagging far behind in the construction of the grids and transmission lines needed to support these technologies. CNBC News said that the current situation of the United States and European countries continuing to lag behind in the construction of transmission lines is "frightening".
"Wind and solar" electricity is difficult to access.
Fatih Birol said: "The development of clean energy in many countries around the world is unprecedented, but failure to ensure that the development of power grids and transmission lines is matched will undoubtedly put the green transition in jeopardy. So far, globally, the grid has not been prepared for a clean energy future. ”
According to IEA data, there are currently 3,000 GW of clean renewable energy projects under construction globally, equivalent to five times the amount of wind and solar power generation capacity in 2022**, of which 1,500 GW are already in the "advanced development stage" but still waiting for grid permits. As countries seek cleaner electricity** to reduce emissions, "wind-solar" power is expected to account for 80% of new electricity generation between now and 2040.
The slow modernization of the power grid has led to a serious shortage of "wind-solar" power absorption capacity, which will undoubtedly bring great challenges to the future dominated by green energy. In the U.S., it takes about five years or more for a new power plant to come online.
According to the British journal Nature Communications, unless there is any major policy shift that undermines the solar industry, solar energy will replace fossil fuels as the new dominant player in the global electricity market in the coming decades.
Grid expansion is necessary, otherwise it will be difficult to absorb the increasing amount of solar power. Jenny Chase, chief solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said, "However, who will pay and how to speed up the pace of construction are still big problems in some countries and regions." ”
Regulatory and litigation hurdles persist.
McKinsey & Company, a consultancy, identified complex regulatory procedures, lack of land for construction, and a grid that cannot absorb electricity as the top three challenges to clean power development. The IEA pointed out that grid modernization will not only require funding, but also some countries will need to change the way they operate and supervise their grids, thus paving the way for more grid and transmission line projects to be implemented.
Take the Sunzia Wind Farm project in the United States, for example, which spans central New Mexico and south-central Arizona, and includes a 3,500-megawatt wind farm and a 550-mile HVDC transmission line capable of delivering 3,000 megawatts of clean electricity when completed. In May this year, the project was finally approved and officially broke ground after a number of legal disputes and route changes, and this is 17 years after the initial application for the project.
According to the New York Times, what is holding back the implementation of the Sunzia wind farm project is the complex and inefficient process of approving permits for transmission lines and grids.
Germany's Suedlink HVDC transmission project, which started in September this year, has also been delayed for a long time. The project was proposed in 2014 with the goal of transporting 4 GW of wind from windy northern Germany to southern Germany to fill the power gap caused by the shutdown of nuclear power in southern Germany. At the same time, the project can also be connected to Nordlink's HVDC submarine interconnection cable, which will transport hydropower from Norway to Germany. The project is expected to be the world's longest underground HVDC power cable, but construction has been faltering, delaying completion and tripling costs.