Europe's grid action plan: a step in the right direction, but is it enough?

The European Commission's launch in November of its grid action plan has brought a new dimension to the energy transition in the region.

In an interview at Enlit Europe, Sanjeet Sanghera, Head of Grids and Utilities at BloombergNEF, said that from an initial reading, the plan is promising and starts to “crack some of the key issues that we would expect to see”.

One of those is the level of public funding, with Europe lagging and spending disproportionately more on clean power generation than grid infrastructure.

To catch up and meet net zero ambitions, a near parity investment ratio is needed, he suggests, and even in the short term potentially even exceeding parity to make up the infrastructure backlog as renewables have continued to pile onto the system.

Also of interest
European energy bosses join IEA’s call for grid action
How France is leading in the digitalisation of its electrical grid

Another point that Sanghera highlights is the concept of ‘anticipatory investment’, which enables spending on projects ahead of their passing the regulatory test for need and which he describes as “crucial” for achieving the needed pace of infrastructure build-up.

However, implementing an anticipatory investment approach requires a change in the regulatory mindset, he comments, adding that

“My recommendation is for a long-term planning mindset to be brought in and we need to see the long-term plans and push for regulators to actually use them and potentially allow to build against those plans. So a bit more centralisation in that process is going to be crucial.”

Beyond that, he adds that there also are roles for more decentralised processes and planning.

“If you look at the distribution grid, the amount of infrastructure that needs to get added is extraordinary but you cannot dig up every single city street and replace it. So we need to find ways to use the infrastructure we do have in place as efficiently as possible and building up on this ability to use our distribution grid in a fundamentally different way is going to be a key challenge in this decade.”