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The Iberian Peninsula in southwest Europe is blessed with wind and solar resources that could help the rest of the region reduce its reliance on natural gas—but whether it ends up as electricity or another energy carrier, getting it out remains difficult
Spain and Portugal could export vast amounts of renewable energy to the rest of Europe but only if there is the political will to invest heavily in sufficient infrastructure
PLENTY TO SPARE The Iberian Peninsula is currently a net energy importer today but a massive buildout of renewables promises to change the picture
ROUTES TO MARKET As low-cost renewable capacity builds up, the challenge for Spain and Portugal will be to find ways of moving the energy abroad
KEY QUOTE You would think it would be a no-brainer to say, “Let’s do everything possible to develop the clean energy resources of southern Europe” ...
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No matter how much wind and solar power is generated, the energy transition cannot be achieved without a built-for-purpose electricity infrastructure. Gaps in the interconnections of Europe’s grid network and lack of capacity on the wires where it is needed most will halt green electrification of energy.
Case study: The breathless furore around blockchain has died down but in some ways, the technology is still supporting the energy transition. Carbon-conscious buyers and sellers can use a distributed ledger to track where the electricity they use comes from
An interconnected transmission grid in Europe would result in lower prices and greater levels of clean energy. But several nations are falling behind on export capacity leading to some member states looking beyond the Union’s borders
This interview with Ole Bigum, head of operations at K2 management, a Danish consultancy providing engineering services for developers of wind and solar power, is part of a series of interviews that FORESIGHT will publish ahead of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM9) and Nordic Clean Energy Week (NCEW), which will take place in Copenhagen and Malmo in May 2018.
Power capacity markets on both sides of the Atlantic face an uncertain future as flexibility becomes a hotter commodity than capacity.
As economic activity declined under the pandemic so did demand for electricity. Fossil fuel generation was squeezed off the grid by renewable energy projects with lower marginal costs. Fears that the higher proportion of fluctuating supply would destabilise power systems proved unfounded and grids remained stable. If renewables are to be tasked with keeping the grid secure, alternative mechanisms, already available, must be introduced soon
Without a European grid up to the task of not only meeting more demand for electricity, but also assimilating it from distributed renewables, green electrification of heating and transport is stymied from the start. Decarbonisation requires new infrastructure, yet the public is having none of it.
A new transmission line across the Baltic Sea shows that a more integrated European power network is not only steadily evolving, but that innovative approaches to infrastructure design can bring down the cost of the energy transition.
The expansion of distributed energy resources has precipitated the rise of advanced software platforms to manage them. Virtual power plants and distributed energy resource management systems can help integrate renewables and low-carbon assets more smoothly while allowing value from the flexibility that resources like rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles and heat pumps can also provide to be extracted
