Europe’s power industry warns ageing grids put green goals at risk

Europe’s electricity industry has warned that unprecedented investments are needed to upgrade ageing electricity grids, or the EU will fail to meet its clean energy targets. The European Union’s plans to curb climate change foresee millions more electric vehicles on European roads by 2030, as well as a massive expansion of renewable energy, and electric heat pumps starting to replace fossil fuel boilers in houses.

Electricity industry association Eurelectric said on Thursday (21 September) that to support those goals, average annual investments in Europe’s electricity grids from now to 2050 need to be at least 84% higher than they were in 2021. “We want to transform the entire energy system at record speed, replace fossil fuels – oil and gas – with electricity. So we add loads of new generation capacity to the grid, we add electric cars, heat pumps,” Eurelectric Secretary General Kristian Ruby said.

“Therefore, you cannot say today what we used to do 10 years ago will be just fine for the next 10 years. It’s just not the case,” he told Reuters.

Source: ECEEE