Belgian energy minister warns on grids: 'don’t let backbone become bottleneck'
Minister also flagged imminent launch of Belgian offshore wind auction featuring 'very ambitious' build time
Europe must not let grid infrastructure that will be the “backbone” of the energy transition turn into a “bottleneck” that threatens its success, warned Belgian energy minister Tinne van der Straeten.
The journey to net zero is “full of challenges,” said van der Straeten, and one of the biggest is building a power grid that can support all of the new wind and solar farms that will need to come online.
Van der Straeten was speaking at the opening of the WindEnergy Hamburg conference, which is expected to see over 40,000 delegates from the global wind sector descend on Germany this week.
Europe must have a “deep and strong” focus on grids, she said, because the current slow grid buildout is currently a “bottleneck” that threatens decarbonisation goals. Without sufficient grid capacity, new renewables projects will “remain struck.”
Van der Straeten also discussed the launch next month of an auction for a 700MW offshore wind farm in its Princess Elisabeth Zone.
The auction will use a two-way Contracts for Difference system that Van der Straeten said was the first of its kind approved by the EU.
The auction specifies a “very ambitious building period” of 48 months, she added.
The 3.5GW of wind power capacity planned for the Princess Elisabeth Zone by 2030 will she said be enough to power every home in Belgium.
Belgium is aiming to hit 6GW of offshore wind capacity in 2030 and 8GW by 2040. Energy think-tank Ember reported in 2022 that Belgium would by the end of the decade have one of the dirtiest electricity grids in the EU due to a high reliance on fossil fuels, with a below-average deployment of renewables planned.