Shaping the energy transition with sustainable power transmission: The energy transition is a tremendous global task
Power transmission plays a crucial role in the energy transition
The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, was adopted by 196 parties end of 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016. It was agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C, preferably to 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. However, the newest UN emission report, published end of 2020, stated that the world is on course for more than a 3 °C spike, even if climate commitments are met. In order to limit global warming, all countries worldwide need to rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible. About 42 % of global CO2 emissions in 2018 accrued in electricity and heat production (source: IEA in 2018). For the necessary energy transition, not only do governments have a special responsibility in creating the right framework conditions but also the energy sector has a central role in actively shaping the path to a climate-friendly future by providing necessary technologies.
Power transmission plays a crucial role in the energy transition
In their annual report “World Energy Outlook 2020,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) draws alternative scenarios of the future energy landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an ongoing huge disruption to the energy sector, and there is a wide range of energy future scenarios. According to the outlook, global energy demand might rebound to its pre-crisis level in early 2023, or even later, depending on when the pandemic is brought under control, and it is still unclear how much efforts countries and companies will put in increasing the sustainability of the energy system. However, the outlook at all the scenarios shows that power generation using renewable energy resources is expected to grow rapidly over the next decades, with solar and wind expecting the highest growth in global electricity generation.
The IEA points out that the backbone of today’s power systems, the electricity grids, might develop as the weak link in the energy transformation. Even in the Stated Policies Scenario, without any additional efforts than already announced to increase the sustainability of the energy system, IEA sees an 80 % increased demand for transmission and distribution grid expansion in the next decade compared to the previous decade.
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