Post by Sympower

“The EU is about to waste €1.2 trillion on grid infrastructure that we wouldn’t need to spend if we used energy in a smarter way.” That line from Greg Jackson at the McKinsey & Company Green Business Building Summit last week hits the nail on the head. The EU’s plan to spend €1.2 trillion on grid modernisation by 2040 is a massive statement of intent, but its strategy shows we’re at a crossroads. The EU cannot buy its way out of grid congestion simply by installing more cables: it needs to rethink its entire grid management system. For that reason, we need regulation changes to allow energy stakeholders like Octopus Energy, Kraken, and Sympower to optimise the infrastructure we already have, rather than defaulting to the slowest and most expensive option: burying more copper. The 21st-century challenge is digital orchestration, and the on-the-ground reality speaks for itself: → "Speed to Power" is the true bottleneck. For battery storage, data centres and renewables, the crisis is time, and the constraint is the grid. Projects can already get stuck for years waiting for a connection; this is only going to worsen with the forecasted 60% surge in electricity consumption by 2030. → We sit on a mountain of wasted renewable energy. In 2024 alone, Europe curtailed over 72 TWh of renewable power because our grids couldn't handle the surge. We switched off enough green energy to power the whole of Austria simply because we are not utilising all the flexibility sources already available. Flexibility is the backbone of our energy systems, and ultimately what will define Europe’s competitiveness. The Grids Package is a start, but what we really need is a regulatory framework that rewards flexibility and the intelligent use of existing assets, rather than one that defaults to simply burying more cables in the ground. #EnergyTransition #SmartGrid #EUPolicy #SpeedToPower #GridModernisation