All over the world, efforts to decarbonize the grid are gathering pace. Transitioning our main sources of energy to renewables requires collaboration, creativity, and significant investment. Ensuring that clean energy is both accessible and affordable to all holds the key to ensuring the transition to a low-carbon economy works for everyone.

Most of the energy provided through the world’s vast, interconnected grid systems is derived from fossil fuels. But moving energy procurement away from fossil fuels to renewables is a long-term process that involves a lot of steps and stakeholders. Infrastructure and energy projects all over the world are taking innovative approaches to scaling up the reliability and consistency of renewable energies and the affordability of large-scale changes to existing systems.

At Alfanar Projects, we’re engaged in projects that help build sustainable and renewably powered societies for the future. With over five decades of experience in developing and constructing energy infrastructure, we are helping governments and the private sector face big challenges and create long-term benefits for communities across the globe.

The traditional energy grid

Energy grids first entered into usage as a solution to growing power demand in large urban areas. By unifying several isolated power systems and plants into a single grid, cities and entire regions were connected to a source of on-demand power. Early energy grids distributed electricity produced in local power plants and factories to households but have since become more adept at transmitting electricity over much larger distances, becoming more energy efficient, resilient, and smarter.

But despite continual upgrades and evolutions in the energy grid system, the existing grid is coming under increased stress from climate change. Extreme weather events are leading to energy outages, and with around two-thirds of all energy provided through this energy infrastructure coming from fossil fuels, they are also a vital component in legacy infrastructure contributing to climate change.

Incorporating renewable energy into energy systems could provide the world with an on-demand source of clean energy. But significant challenges need to be overcome before such a wholesale transition can occur.

How can renewables power energy grids?

While the importance of transitioning energy grids towards renewables is evident, concerns over their reliability and energy efficiency remain.

While such concerns have been historically valid, technology and the increasing efficiency of renewable energy is proving that renewables are an increasingly viable option for energy grids. For example, when a major winter storm hit Texas’s predominantly gas-powered grid in 2021, the extreme cold and snowfall knocked out an estimated 45 gigawatts of power and created prolonged power outages. Record-breaking heatwaves across the US and Europe in the summer of 2022 led to increased demand for air conditioning, applying major stress to domestic grids – especially in urban areas and cities.

But, despite the extreme stresses, renewable energy has proven to be a more reliable source of power. During periods of extreme heat in California that threatened power cuts, energy storage batteries played a major role in keeping energy systems online. With climate risk, an increasingly important factor when it comes to building energy resilience, the strong performance of renewable energy during times of extreme stress shows the increasing viability of these energy sources for grids.

While no single source of energy can be relied on to power an entire national grid, renewables have offered a vital and resilient source of energy during periods of extreme stress for the fossil fuel grid. A diversified grid, drawing on wind, solar, biomass, and other alternative fuels has the potential to upgrade existing grids to renewable sources, as well as provide greater resilience in the face of climate stress.

A renewable grid may also be more energy efficient than today’s energy systems. Whereas fossil-generated electricity has an efficiency of only an estimated 33%, with around two-thirds of burnt energy being released as waste, renewables typically run much closer to an efficiency of 100%, significantly reducing carbon emissions and cutting wastage.

The challenges of renewable grids

While renewables offer a number of cost benefits and can be a resilient source of energy, creating an entirely renewable grid brings many challenges. For one, natural variations in renewables mean operators and policymakers will need to adapt to new ways of managing energy. How can energy grids dynamically respond to sustained shortages of solar or wind, for example?

Moreover, how can regions, where access to certain natural resources is particularly scarce, transition to a sustainable grid? While some regions may have a lot of access to renewable sources, others may have much less. Such a disparity could lead to some countries being dependent on imported energy, in turn potentially leading to higher energy costs for consumers. The costs of building the infrastructure needed to facilitate the transition to a renewable grid also vary from region to region, leaving any transition to sustainable grids at risk of imposing inequitable costs on developing regions.

Advances in technology and machine learning are one-way renewable grids can be equipped to deal with fluctuations in energy supply. By leveraging AI, hyperconnectivity, and automation, renewable grids may be able to manage their own energy supplies intelligently, making for a more resilient energy network. Already, AI and machine learning is being used to predict extreme weather patterns and inform relief efforts, and this responsive capability can help renewable grids predict changing supplies of renewable energy and adjust outputs accordingly. Moreover, with more powerful data centers and a greater level of interconnectedness, energy infrastructure can better predict bottlenecks and surges in demand, allowing operators to allocate energy supplies to where they are most needed. But while technology can help facilitate a transition to adaptable energy grids, ensuring such a transition remains equitable for everyone remains a challenge.

Empowering renewable grids in the Middle East

Equal access to affordable and renewable energy is a challenge facing all global actors. Energy grids consist of key infrastructure, from power plants to distribution lines, all of which require financing. In short, energy systems cannot easily be built from new and will take time to become entirely renewable. Ensuring such a major transition comes without a heavy cost to energy users is one of the foremost challenges of the energy transformation and requires collaboration at a global scale between different partners.

How close are we to a renewable grid?

Transitioning away from carbon-intensive grids to renewables is a vital step towards circular energy. And, while we are still some way from bringing entirely renewable grids online, major sources of renewable energy are being scaled, increasingly making renewables more affordable and feasible.