Decarbonisation in Practice

To realize its renewable energy and other climate-related goals, Germany is pursuing digitalization across the energy sector. Smart meters are an integral step toward digitalization and the German government mandated their rollout as a result, beginning in 2025 and set to fully replace analog meters by the end of 2032. Smart metering allows for dynamic electricity tariffs, a practice that enables consumers and suppliers alike to save money while providing other benefits like transparency when commissioning EV charging stations and other projects.

Swedish distribution system operators (DSOs) sought to better allocate costs and reduce the risk of over dimensioning network capacity. To achieve this and comply with legislation adopted in 2003, smart meters were rolled out in Sweden to meet the 2009 legislative deadline. Sweden has demonstrated the pooled procurement reduces deployment costs for smaller DSOs while providing opportunities to exchange resources and expertise, with DSOs achieving further savings from features like remote updating software.

Europe experienced severe gas shortages following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine which exposed its dependence on Russia to meet its energy needs. REPowerEU is a European Commission program intended to end said dependence with a significant focus on renewables like wind energy, resulting in two wind power initiatives being adopted in October 2023. The initiatives have resulted in auction changes to include pre-qualification and non-price criteria, among other implemented actions, with REPowerEU increasing Europe’s installed wind capacity and annual wind production in addition to reducing CO2 emissions and natural gas consumption.

Renewables like the photovoltaic plant in Razlog, Bulgaria require frequency control due to fluctuations in output. To provide this service while enhancing the project’s economic viability via arbitrage, a 55 MWh BESS was co-located with the plant in 2024 by Renalfa IPP. This project marked the first utility-scale BESS in Bulgaria and set a regional precedent as Renalfa introduces BESSs in other countries and with its other renewable plants.

Renewables like wind are integral to reducing CO2 emissions, however, the impacts of turbines often limit public buy-in. Following a 1997 contest, the Danish island of Samsø has become the world’s first island powered only by renewable energy, primarily through 20 community-owned wind turbines. Boasting an annual carbon footprint of negative 12 tons per capita, the island has demonstrated that community ownership and meaningful consultation surrounding the turbines’ location builds support for renewable energy projects.

As renewables have grown in popularity, solutions to store energy during peak production and offload it during peak demand have become necessary. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology is one avenue to achieve this, as it enables electric vehicles (EVs) to connect their batteries to the energy grid with bidirectional charging. The technology has grown and improved rapidly, demonstrating that it can reduce EV ownership costs by selling electricity when prices are high and prevent potential blackouts without fossil fuel power plants.

While renewable energy sources fail to output electricity consistently, Alternating Current (AC) fails to efficiently transmit electricity across long distances. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) overcomes these issues in enabling efficient transmission from remote offshore wind farms and in facilitating international interconnections that exploit regions with different weather patterns. The Morocco-UK interconnection will provide enough electricity to power 7 million British homes, with other UK-based HVDC projects like Dogger Bank and Hornsea Project Two offering multi-gigawatt capacities.

Integral for minimizing the impact of offshore wind farms on marine life, traditional marine monitoring is a costly and delayed process carried out by divers and laboratory analysis. To decrease the cost and delays associated with the practice, companies like Seiche and Deep Vision are developing tools based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Their current partnership is expected to produce an autonomous camera system capable of detecting, locating, and quantifying marine mammals in all weather conditions, at and above surface level.

Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels was exposed by the gas shortages which followed Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. To minimize the risk associated with this dependency in the face of delays and cost overruns in the construction of new nuclear reactors, France has ramped up investment in wind energy in accordance with the third edition of its Multiannual Energy Program (PPE3). While France is currently home to 1.5 GW of offshore wind energy, that capacity is expected to rise to 18 GW by 2035 and 45 GW by 2050.

As Greece has invested significantly in renewables, the amount of energy curtailed has risen dramatically due to insufficient energy storage. To combat this and preserve producer revenue, Greece’s Regulatory Authority for Energy, Waste, and Water (RAAEY) launched a program in 2023 to allocate 1 GW of new, subsidized energy storage capacity in three competitive auction rounds. It has resulted in 900 MW of battery storage capacity being allocated and been followed by two other programs supporting battery storage in Greece.

Despite its total potential of 76 GW of offshore wind energy, Romania lacked a legal, regulatory framework to realize this potential. Law 121/2024 was adopted to remedy this, requiring an expert study to inform the concession procedure and pertinent guidelines for offshore wind power plants that the government was set to approve by June 2025. While the law’s full implementation has been hindered due to delays in conducting the expert study, other measures like licensing procedures have been developed and enabled Romania to become a regional leader as the first country on the Black Sea with a regulatory framework for offshore wind energy.

While small and medium enterprises (SMEs) employ 56% of Germany’s workforce, few have engaged seriously in digitalization projects due to a lack of basic understanding and fears surrounding costs. The German government has sought to change this via two distinct but adjacent programs: “go-digital”, which provides for subsidized consulting and implementation services of digitalization projects; and “Digital Now!”, which subsidizes investments in digital technology and employee training for digital transformation. The government’s pursuit has triggered revenue growth totaling approximately €447.1 million among participating SMEs, reaching companies of all sizes and across all industries and regions.

Denmark aimed for wind energy to support 50% of its electricity consumption by 2020, relying completely on renewables by 2050. To reach these ambitious goals, Denmark has invested heavily in the research and development of renewable and smart grid technologies while fostering a favorable environment and framework conditions. As a result, Denmark has hosted 22% of all projects relating to smart grids in the EU and become a leader among OECD countries in scientific publications and citations concerning energy and the environment.

Poland inaugurated its 1.2 GW commercial offshore wind farm in 2023, a project representative of Europe’s growing demand for offshore wind. To meet Poland’s goal of 18 GW of installed capacity by 2040, Vestas is opening two new factories in Szczecin, Poland, that will produce offshore nacelles and blades for the company’s flagship offshore wind turbine. Once operational, these factories will provide more than 1,700 direct jobs and support the further development of Europe’s sustainable supply chain for wind energy.

A core pillar of the transition to renewables, wind energy produces countless avian deaths each year due to birds’ lateral vision, a phenomenon with significant costs for the wind energy sector that threatens biodiversity. To lessen the impact of wind turbines on birds, the UK requires Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) for wind farms, with solutions beyond surveys and planning seeking to make turbines more conspicuous. As AI-powered software tools support scalability, ornithological monitoring has demonstrated that impacts are best mitigated by not building in areas likely to affect birds, as conspicuous solutions still interrupt avian routes.

As Naples suffers from high rates of poverty, unemployment, and energy poverty, Italy is pursuing greater integration of renewable energy, specifically through energy communities. To simultaneously alleviate poverty and further the green transition, San Giovanni a Teduccio was chosen to become Italy’s inaugural renewable and solidarity energy community with support from local foundations. The program provided environmental education to local children and participating families, with installed photovoltaics providing energy for 40 economically disadvantaged families.

To reach Italy’s Fit-for-55 package targets and better integrate renewable energy, Italy requires investments in grid digitalization and further developed international interconnections. Italian transmission system operator (TSO) Terna is pursuing these necessary investments via its Hypergrid system that employs High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology. The Hypergrid is expected to more than double the national energy grid’s transport capacity from 16 GW to 39 GW while decreasing emissions by thousands of kilotons annually and reducing renewable curtailment.

In 2023, Bulgaria’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) announced that it requires 3000 MW of new pumped-storage hydropower plant (PSHPP) capacities due to the inconsistent output of renewable energy sources and balancing services they require. To meet this goal, two new PSHPPs are set to be constructed, known as Dospat and Batak, while the Chaira PSHPP is currently undergoing rehabilitation. Once completed, these three facilitates will produce a total of approximately 2.4 GW and ease the load on Bulgaria’s energy grid with 24-hour and weekly management and balancing services.

Bulgaria’s investments in photovoltaics and other renewables require frequency balancing to accommodate their inconsistent output. Because energy storage provides this service, Bulgaria’s Ministry of Energy launched the National Infrastructure for Storage of Renewable Energy (RESTORE) procedure to increase the country’s energy storage capacities via grants for eligible projects. The procedure appears successful thus far, selecting projects set to deliver more than 9,700 MWh of storage capacity, or more than three times its original 3 GWh target.

Published in December 2021, the “Roadmap for the Development of Offshore Wind and Marine Energy In Spain" highlights the need for spatial planning to support the development of offshore renewables. As a result, Spain established a framework for maritime spatial planning (MSP) in 2017 that was approved in 2023. The five separate plans adopted by Spain have identified and set priority use zones and high-potential areas, including for offshore wind energy, thereby completing the first step in Spain’s aforementioned Roadmap.

As Greece’s National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) aims for 8.1 GW of energy storage by 2030 and 80% of electricity from renewable sources, it is necessary to increase the system’s energy storage capacity. Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy established a “Storage Task Force” in 2021 to support this pursuit with the intention of proposing measures to facilitate the development and integration of energy storage. The Task Force’s recommendations resulted in substantial regulatory amendments via laws and ministerial decisions the following year and beyond which implemented measures to prevent double taxation on storage assets and streamlined permitting processes for storage projects, among other regulatory changes.

The UK’s Electricity Market Reform program pursues sufficient investment in low-carbon technologies to reach the national target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050 in addition to the minimization of costs and maximization of benefits associated with these technologies. To support the delivery of these two strategic objectives, the UK’s Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme was established in 2014, offering price stability to producers and consumers alike via fifteen-year contracts allocated through competitive auctions.

Significant energy savings were considered necessary for Germany to hit its national and supranational energy and climate targets. To achieve these savings, the Energy Savings Meter Program was launched, offering performance-based renumerations and support for digitalization efforts. The program resulted in increased energy efficiency and demonstrated that highlighting co-benefits like improved energy quantification and reduced emissions further drives the uptake of household smart meters.

Renewable energy sources lack a consistent output and require additional power for stabilization in the form of frequency regulation and other balancing services. To provide this, a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) was commissioned in Schwerin, Germany in 2014 and later expanded in 2017. This project demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of BESSs in Europe, including their ability to provide more than energy storage capacity, as the Schwerin BESS provided frequency regulation and was one of the first tested black-start capable BESSs worldwide.

Austria’s energy industry relied on a vulnerable and inefficient centralized database and offered a complex, month-long switching process to customers. To increase security and improve switching for consumers, the Energy Data Exchange (EDA) was devised as a decentralized, standardized, encrypted data exchange for all market participants in the Austrian energy community in addition to the platform known as ENERGYlink that provided for fully automated electronic switching.

In accommodating the growing popularity of renewable and local energy sources, the two-way flow of electricity and information is necessary for maintaining efficiency and system security. EcoGrid EU and EcoGrid 2.0 were two projects held in Denmark designed to demonstrate the feasibility of such a system while incorporating demand-based pricing. The projects successfully demonstrated flexible consumption and how demand-based pricing encourages consumers to adapt their energy usage away from peak demand and toward peak production, all without compromising consumer heating comfort.

Floating offshore wind turbines pose high maintenance costs due to measures like human diving inspections and robot vehicles, with operational expenditure totaling more than one-third of the lifetime cost for these turbines. Digital twin technology is one avenue to decrease these costs, as divers and robots are replaced by machine learning and virtual sensors. Research and projects in the UK have demonstrated that this technology can reduce upkeep costs and downtime by up to 30% and 70%, respectively.

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the European Union experienced severe natural gas shortages that exposed its dependence on Russia for meeting its energy needs. In ramping up its investment in renewable energy to decrease this dependence, 9 EU member states and the UK have formed the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC) to collectively advance offshore wind energy in the North Seas.

The growth of renewable energy sources in Germany has produced a need for greater frequency control to account for the inconsistent output of renewables and stabilize the energy supply. With battery storage systems providing the frequency control and balancing services integral to renewable penetration, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein initiated the Bordesholm Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) projected in 2017.

Due to its reliance on mechanical meters, Italy’s main electric utility company, ENEL, faced high operational expenditure and low success rates for verifying meter activity. To reduce costs and curtail electricity theft, ENEL began rolling out smart meters in 2001 and finished by 2006 with 30 million smart meters installed.

Elhub AS is Norway’s centralized data hub for electricity market processes, established in 2019 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Statnett (the Norwegian transmission system operator responsible for developing and maintaining the national power grid). It was created to streamline the handling of metering data and market processes, ensuring efficient and secure data exchange among market participants.

As Germany's battery value chain expands with new factories and forecasted annual growth rates in the double digits, thousands of skilled workers with technical knowledge and expertise are necessary to avoid an industry slowdown. To ward off this possibility, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) tendered a €20 million project to invest in institutional knowledge. Known as the Itzehoe Battery Specialist Training Center, this project is set to become operational in 2026 and train 600 to 900 battery specialists annually, with digital learning environments offering possible scalability.