Europe can add 25GW of renewables without new grid builds
Energy think tank Ember has found that combining wind and solar with existing hydropower connections could bypass Europe's severe grid bottlenecks, offering a crucial shortcut for investors and accelerating the continent's clean energy deployment.
Europe could integrate 25 gigawatts of wind and solar power across seven major markets without constructing any additional grid capacity. A new analysis from energy think tank Ember identifies "hybridisation" – connecting multiple power sources like wind, solar, and storage to a single grid point – as a rapid workaround to the continent's infrastructure bottlenecks.
The continent's electricity network, originally designed for centralised coal plants, struggles to handle the variable output of modern renewables. Ember previously warned that insufficient grid capacity puts more than 120GW of anticipated renewable projects at risk. To contextualise that volume, 1GW of capacity could power approximately 876,000 households for a year based on an average consumption of 10,000 kWh.
For energy companies and investors, these connection queues represent stalled capital and delayed returns. Hybridisation offers a way to accelerate project completion by sidestepping the wait for grid upgrades, allowing developers to bring power to market much faster and maximise the use of existing infrastructure.
Hydropower plants in Austria, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain are prime targets for this strategy. These facilities act as on-demand power sources that typically ramp up during morning and evening demand peaks, leaving substantial grid capacity unused during daylight hours.
Adding solar or wind generation to these same connections allows operators to capture that wasted daytime capacity. "By adding wind or solar at the same connection point as a hydropower plant, developers can get online faster and operators can use grid infrastructure more efficiently – on average doubling utilisation – while staying within export limits," says Elisabeth Cremona, energy infrastructures lead at Ember.
Implementing this across the seven specified markets would integrate 18 per cent of the new renewables expected by 2030. This effectively mitigates the need for immediate, heavy capital expenditure on grid expansion to accommodate this specific portion of generation.
The primary obstacle is regulatory rather than technical. Only Portugal and Spain currently possess specific rules governing hybrid projects. The remaining five countries lack the clear frameworks needed to deploy this strategy at scale.
Ember is urging national governments to introduce legislation that prioritises hybrid projects. "Political ambitions mean nothing if clean electrons are stranded in connection queues," Cremona adds. "For countries facing gridlock, hybridisation offers an immediate, zero-intervention solution."
