More than €100 billion of renewables are stuck in Europe’s outdated energy grid, as communities across the continent wait years for solar panels and heat pumps.
A new report by consulting group AFRY, commissioned by non-profit Beyond Fossil Fuels, found that a staggering 375 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy projects and 455 GW of battery storage projects are trapped in distribution grid queues across the continent.
To put that into perspective, a power plant that operates continuously throughout the year with a capacity of 1GW could power approximately 876,000 households annually, based on average consumption figures from Carbon Collective.
Without intervention, the report – which analyses Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Great Britain – warns that Europe risks “deepening” its reliance on volatile fossil fuels.
Despite Europe’s renewable boom, which saved the EU €51 billion last year by lowering oil and gas imports, almost a third (29 per cent) of the bloc’s electricity mix still comes from fossil fuels.
