We are screwed...no cable capacity.
From next year, engineers will need to roll out more than 100km (62 miles) of electric cabling every day until 2040 if the government hopes to power the UK towards its climate goals, according to new data.
Analysis of Britain’s existing power grids and the country’s predicted electricity demand reveals that within the next 17 years, more than 600,000km of electric lines will need to be either added or upgraded across the UK.
The research, carried out by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and shared with the Observer, lays bare the scale of Britain’s infrastructure challenge, even as energy companies prepare to speed up the building of pylons, power lines and undersea cables.
This surge in electrical infrastructure will be a critical step in the government’s plan to wean the economy off fossil fuels and create a net zero nation by 2050. Challenges will include overhauling government policy and securing supplies of the high-voltage cables needed.
Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, has urged governments worldwide to “open their eyes” to the scale of the task facing them.
Advanced economies will need to lay at least 23 million kilometres of power lines by 2040 to meet their renewable energy goals, according to a recent report, and on a global level, 80m km of cable will be needed.
“If we want clean electricity, we need not only clean methods of generation, but we need to build grids. It has been a blind spot of governments’ clean energy transition programmes of,” said Birol.