A Giant Grid Bottleneck Is Threatening Climate Goals

In the US, China and Europe, wind and solar power installations are being announced at an unprecedented pace. But many are getting caught in what’s becoming known as the grid bottleneck. Meeting net zero climate goals will require making electrical grids far bigger and more resilient than they are now, but red tape and local opposition are blocking or slowing thousands of proposals to expand green power and grid capacity.

A transition from fossil fuels to renewable power sources will require vast changes to the interconnected networks of generating plants, transmissions lines and substations that make up the grid. For one thing, as parts of the economy that still rely on oil, gas and coal, such as transportation, home heating and steelmaking are shifted to electricity, global power capacity will need to grow to 39.7 terawatts by 2050 from 8.5 terawatts in 2022, according to BloombergNEF. Over the same period, the proportion of that energy derived from wind and solar is expected to increase more than fivefold to over 70%, meaning that grids not only have to get bigger, but need to be retooled to store and handle power that rises and falls with the availability of wind and sunshine.