EUROPE'S ENERGY TRANSITION


Europe has been taught some valuable lessons over the past two years about energy transition, even if some have been painful, and highlighted both the need for holistic thinking, as well as underlining the importance of the key elements in the World Energy Council's Energy Trilemma Index - Reliability, Affordability and Sustainability — and obviously, Security has also become a primary concern.


As I have previously noted: for all that the EU has for many a year talked about energy transition, and even placed it at the very centre of its EUR 807 Bln ‘Next Generation EU’ (pandemic) recovery fund, this has largely been a case of ‘talking the talk', while there has been little in the way of ‘walking the walk’. As with so many of the weaknesses exposed by the pandemic and latterly the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been far too


much ‘virtue signalling’ and above all linear, as opposed to systemic thinking. Chest beating and moralizing rhetoric may be useful in political terms, but achieves nothing in pragmatic terms, above all in terms of understanding the inordinately complex supply chains that are involved and then formulating a plan of action that is attuned to economic, geographical and climate realities.


It should be added that while this article focuses on Europe, many of the challenges are of a similar nature elsewhere, though it should be stressed every challenge is an opportunity to be realized, rather than being presented as an obstacle. As has been all too obvious over the past couple of years, the UK and EU countries' investments in wind and solar energy have been substantial and are taking an increasing share of total power output. But above all in the northern part of Europe are unreliable, with gas, nuclear and even coal to continue to act as the marginal sources for electricity production which is why wind and solar are termed ‘intermittent renewable energy


sources’ (RES). By extension, baseload power prices all too often fluctuate sharply with the variability in wind power availability and natural gas prices, above all in reaction to wind power availability. The immense often parabolic price shocks in gas and electricity prices over the past couple of years have finally forced the EU into realizing that energy transition will require a huge modernization of its power grid, and EU wide integration and a smart distribution network, which is fully automated and digitalized, as well as a sharp increase in utility-storage capacity, to ensure both reliability and flexibility. According to an estimate from the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the cost of this EU wide upgrade between 2020 and 2030 will be around EUR 584 Bln, though it should be added this is a conservative estimate that assumes no material disruptions and a smooth implementation.


However, there is a lot more to consider above all from the aspects of sustainability and indeed energy conservation, for example, decentralized


12 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | Sustainability Edition 2022


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20