• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires May 29, 2023
Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax May 29, 2023
Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing May 29, 2023
UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety May 29, 2023
Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village May 29, 2023
Next
Prev

COP Process Moving Too Slowly to Decarbonize Global Power Grid, Advocate Warns

November 2, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes

globe at night, electricity grid lit up

Green Grids Initiative / The News Market

1
SHARES
 

Declaring that the UN’s consensus-based process is moving too slowly to solve the climate crisis, a global, non-partisan group of elected officials is trying to lead the charge to decarbonize the world’s electricity grids. 

The Green Grids Initiative (GGI) drew support from more than 80 countries led by India and the United Kingdom on Tuesday, the second day of COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Reuters reports. It launched in 2014 with a plan to use smart grid and high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technologies to get the carbon pollution out of the world’s electricity supply.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

“If the world has to move to a clean and green future, these interconnected transnational grids are going to be critical solutions,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement.

“We have to shift very, very fast from fossil fuels to renewable energy everywhere in order to stay within a safe carbon limit,” Climate Parliament co-founder and secretary-general Nicholas Dunlop told the side meeting, pointing to the August, 2021 IPCC science assessment that showed the available carbon budget for a 1.5°C future running out in four to 10 years.

“There’s more than enough renewable energy to power every car, every factory, every building with clean energy,” Dunlop added. But to get it done, “we’ll need new political vehicles that go faster” than the COP was ever designed to, “and we’re hoping the Green Grids Initiative will be such a vehicle.”

The GGI starts out with the suggestion—whether or not it’s intended literally—that solar panels across a single, large patch of the Sahara Desert in northern Africa would supply as much electricity as the world produces today. That scheme raises issues ranging from the ecosystem impacts of the power station to the reliability and resilience of a grid that depends on a single, large source of generation. But the calculation gives “just an idea of how much resource we have if we just connect ourselves to it,” Dunlop maintained.

A video short that GGI used to open the workshop touted a global grid that would address any remaining intermittency problems with often stunningly affordable solar and wind technologies. Using a wider grid to back up more distributed renewables across regional and national borders “allows us to transform economies and save lives because of climate change, which will have immeasurable impact,” said Paddy Padmanatha, CEO and president of ACWA Power, a Riyadh, Saudi-Arabia-based power and desalination company with operations in 13 countries.

“From a technical point of view it’s perfectly easy to power the world from renewable energy,” Dunlop said. “You build long distance HVDC lines that can transmit power thousands of kilometres with very little [line] loss, to link us all to the areas where renewable energy is most abundant.”

The video also pointed to a rather more decentralized use for a globally-interconnected power system, with Dunlop suggesting an analogy to another global grid that “we’ve all got used to using and take for granted”. Just as anyone from the biggest producer to the smallest user can feed information into the Internet or draw it back out, “it needs to be the same with energy,” he said, with a grid that can accept power from the largest utility-scale solar system or a rooftop panel.

“We need to think beyond the nation-state and share our clean energy resources in order for everyone to have an unlimited supply of clean, cheap, energy,” he said, adding that the biggest obstacle to his vision is not public buy-in, but a lack of political leadership.



in Africa, Clean Electricity Grid, Climate & Society, COP Conferences, Demand & Distribution, Ending Emissions, International Agencies & Studies, Jurisdictions, Renewable Energy, Solar, Wind

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Martin Davis/Facebook
Carbon Levels & Measurement

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
254
Neal Alderson/Twitter
Drought & Wildfires

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
1.9k
York Region/flickr
Heat & Temperature

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
160

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Neal Alderson/Twitter

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
1.9k
Martin Davis/Facebook

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
254
York Region/flickr

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
160
pixabay

Anti-Mob Laws to Prosecute Fossils, Kudos for Calgary, 113M Climate Refugees, Orcas Fight Back, and a Climate Dictionary

May 29, 2023
185

Waste Heat from Quebec Data Centre to Grow 80,000 Tonnes of Veggies Per Year

May 29, 2023
68
Inspiration 4 Photos/flickr

Cooling Upper Atmosphere Has Scientists ‘Very Worried’

May 23, 2023
305

Recent Posts

Jörg Möller/Pixabay

UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety

May 29, 2023
49
kpgolfpro/Pixabay

Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village

May 29, 2023
45
Pexels/pixabay

Engineers Replace Sand in Concrete with Disposable Diapers

May 29, 2023
23
Sol y Playa condo, Rincón, Puerto Rico

Storms, Sea Level Rise Intensify Conflicts Over Public Beach Access

May 29, 2023
34

U.S. Megadrought Brings Private Water Brokers Into Focus

May 28, 2023
34
FMSC/Flickr

Waive Debt to Unlock Urgently Needed Adaptation Funds, Researchers Urge

May 27, 2023
30
Next Post
Future Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault multi-tasks during 2017 UN climate conference in Bonn/Mitchell Beer photo

‘Hey, Guilbeault’: Former COP Colleagues Urge New Environment Minister Not to ‘Break Their Hearts’

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}