Global Power Grid Expansion Surges 50% to Record High

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Utilities built a total of over 21,000 km of new transmission lines last year, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported this week at COP31, citing data from a group…

What I Cover Irina Slav has been writing about global energy markets since 2007, covering the oil and gas industry, energy security, commodities, and the…

Utilities built a total of over 21,000 km of new transmission lines last year, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported this week at COP31, citing data from a group called the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance. This is 50% more than the new transmission lines installed during the previous year, IRENA noted in its report.

“Power grids will make or break not only the energy transition but also the world’s ambition to raise global electrification to 35% by 2035, as championed by the Turkish COP31 Presidency,” said the director-general of IRENA, Francesco La Camera. “IRENA’s analysis shows that global grid investment must more than double, reaching a cumulative USD 10 trillion by 2035,” he added, noting that ambition would not be enough and that “We must move from targets to implementation, from individual projects to system-wide transformation, and from commitments to delivery at scale.”

Transmission line capacity has become one of the biggest obstacles in the path of the energy transition. Due to their weather-dependent, variable output nature, wind and solar installations generate electricity intermittently. Because the best locations for such installations are often far from electricity demand centers, having to waste output in times of low demand is a frequent occurrence with both. Called curtailment, wind and solar electricity waste increases costs for the alternative energy sources.

The solution, net-zero proponents such as the International Energy Agency believe, is to expand the grid by building new transmission lines connecting wind and solar installations with demand centers. Back in 2023, the IEA said utilities needed to add or replace some 50 million km of transmission lines by 2040 if Paris Agreement signatories were to meet their commitments.

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