Countries are racing to install renewable energy capacity, but have failed to build the electrical-grid infrastructure to support it.
The UK is a “cautionary tale,” The Wall Street Journal reported, building a huge network of wind and solar farms and generating a huge percentage of its power from renewables. But it lacks transmission lines to move the electricity around, and is now racing to update its 1960s-era power lines, by trying to remove regulatory hurdles and bottlenecks.
While Britain is an extreme case, similar problems exist elsewhere. Decades-old grids in the US are hampering new energy rollouts, and Spain’s huge blackout in April was blamed on an aged system unable to cope with power swings.
