European Wind Energy Projects Face Lengthy Delays Before Coming Online

A recent report from WindEurope has revealed Europe’s transition to green energy has run headlong into a significant barrier: wind energy projects are waiting up to several years to gain access to energy grids. The report found that hundreds of such projects across the continent have been forced to wait years to obtain a grid connection. Furthermore, this backlog of projects is moving so slowly, it has created a bottleneck that is slowing the green-energy transition in Europe.

According to the WindEurope report, gaining access to Europe’s energy grid represents the foremost barrier to the deployment of renewables such as wind and solar at scale in Europe. Even though the continent has made significant strides in deploying green-energy infrastructure, long wait times mean many of these projects aren’t impactful for quite a long time.

As it stands, Europe isn’t upgrading its power networks fast enough to absorb the increased capacity from renewables. Many European countries also have extremely slow grid-permitting procedures that can leave wind-energy projects waiting for up to nine years to gain grid-connection approval, the WindEurope report noted.

This has left the permitting system clogged up, WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson says, and made it impossible for Europe to use hundreds of gigawatts’ worth of wind-generated energy. With the European Union racing to generate at least 42.5% of its power from renewables by 2030, it will have to expand its wind-energy capacity from 220GW in 2024 to 425GW by the end of the decade, a feat that will undoubtedly be challenging with current permitting processes.

Report authors say the “first-come, first-served” basis used to assess wind-energy projects is partly responsible for the slow permitting process and resultant backlog because it means the most mature projects with the highest likelihood of moving forward can’t jump to the head of the queue. Over 500GW of wind capacity in France, Croatia, Germany, Norway, Italy, Romania, the UK, Ireland and Spain are now waiting to join the grid, the authors say.

The second factor behind limited access to the grid is “curtailment,” the report notes, with grid congestion making it impossible for wind farms that are already connected to the grid to export their capacity. These two factors are largely responsible for the limited grid access wind farms in Europe are experiencing, the report said. European nations will have to streamline their grid-permitting processes to fast-track mature projects and connect them to the grid to help achieve the regional bloc’s green-energy goals.

As these bottlenecks are addressed and more clean energy finds its way onto the grid, the ecobenefits of electric vehicles from manufacturers such as Mullen Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN) could be ramped up once green energy is used to charge the zero-emissions vehicles.

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