Global electricity grid must be upgraded urgently to hit climate goals, says IEA
Global electricity grid must be upgraded urgently to hit climate goals, says IEA
Global electricity grid must be upgraded urgently to hit climate goals, says IEA
Ministers have been urged to “open their eyes” to the need to build a vast network of new electricity grids to allow countries to hit climate goals, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), has warned that the equivalent of the entire global electricity grid – 80m km of grid – needs to be added or refurbished by 2040 to hit climate targets and ensure reliable power supplies.
Global investment in energy grids needs to double to more than $600bn (£492bn) a year by 2030 to hit national climate targets after “over a decade of stagnation at the global level”, the IEA said.
This is one of the biggest issues we have in the power industry, in my opinion. The market just isn't set up right to cover this, distribution and transmission network operators have little incentive to build infrastructure and often try to pass off the cost to their customers. When you build a generation site or a factory, you also pay for all the network operator's equipment - even though they're the ones who end up owning it. For large individual sites it this might be viable, but when it comes to the infrastructure that will service many smaller sites the network operators tend to sit back until someone pays them.
this is a a perfect example of why the power industry should never ever be privatised.
Lots of posts on this issue today. We also need support for rooftop solar, community solar and battery installations. For funding: stop subsidizing fossil fuel and meat industries.
Unfortunately solar has left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, because solar in general has very low margins and was often done by fly-by-night contractors. They cut corners, particularly with cable sizes, leading to them catching fire. These problems have been more or less resolved now, at least for solar farms on the ground in a field, however people are still wary of rooftop solar.
There's also the issue that you need to clean the panels fairly regularly, otherwise the performance degrades. In a field this can be pretty easy, often they just contract it out to the farmer who owns the land and he just drives his tractor with a cleaning attachment on the back between the rows of panels. However, on roofs this can be much more difficult.
Battery or BESS systems are being built. This is a new sector that's still finding its feet, the technology is more or less there but the packaged systems are still developing.
Community generation in general is something I'm all for. The first wind farm I ever visited was entirely community owned by a town in Wales, they had a rugby player kick a ball over the blades when they opened it lol. I've been back a few times, they have kids up there to show them how renewables work, and they also have this little exercise bike with a dynamo which drives a bunch of things (light bulb, fan, USB, an AC mains socket) so all the kids can see how much energy they need to power stuff.