Grid connection at European ports and airports: solutions to accelerate transport electrification

While the EU has reduced its overall greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent since 1990, emissions from international aviation and shipping have moved in the opposite direction, rising by 29 percent and 26 percent respectively. No other economic sector has grown its emissions as much. Those two sectors are hard to decarbonise because direct electrification is currently challenging due to the massive energy density required for long-distance travel. Today's batteries are too heavy and bulky to match the energy density of fossil fuels on long-distance voyages and flights.

Nevertheless, the EU has finally taken the lead by requiring direct electrification of shipping and aviation, where possible: at berth and at the gate.

In shipping, AFIR and FuelEU Maritime require container and passenger ships calling at EU ports to plug into Onshore Power Supply (OPS) by 2030, instead of using their auxiliary engines at berth. Less ship exhaust means cleaner air for the dockworkers and residents near the port. Ferries and short-sea vessels, meanwhile, are also going hybrid and fully electric. Soon, electricity at ports won't just be powering ships at berth but they'll also be refuelling their batteries.

In aviation, AFIR obliges TEN-T core and comprehensive network airports (excluding the ones under 10,000 commercial flight movements a year) to supply electricity to stationary aircraft at contact stands from 2025 and at remote stands from 2030. In other words, all major European airports will need to supply electricity to stationary aircraft at the gate thereby retiring the diesel-powered ground power units (GPU). Ground Support Equipment (GSE) - baggage tractors, pushback tugs, belt loaders - are electrifying just as fast. Electric and hybrid-electric aircraft for short regional routes are already in the prototype stage. The terminal decisions airports make today will decide whether those aircraft have anywhere to plug in tomorrow.

Here's the problem

On the one hand, 375 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy projects and 455 GW of battery storage projects are sitting in a queue, waiting for permission to connect to the grid. On the other hand, electricity consumption sites like factories, data centres, ports and airports are stuck in a similar queue. The two queues are technically separate - one for generation, one for demand - but they face the same difficulty to connect to the grid. The reason is that the construction time of new infrastructure is slower than the demand or generation connection. This creates a lack of physical grid capacity; in other words grid congestion.

The connection queue is a meaningful indicator to estimate the electrification speed. It is the backlog of projects waiting for their Distribution System Operators (DSO) or Transmission System Operators (TSO) to confirm how much power they can deliver, where and when. The longer the queue, the longer projects must wait to access the grid, and they often have no way of knowing in advance how long that wait will be.

Why has it come to this? 

Partly because Europe's grid is aging and was built for a world of a few large power stations and slow, predictable demand growth not distributed renewable power generation; and not for hundreds of ports, airports, factories and car fleets all switching to electricity. Partly because building a new connection or reinforcement takes 4 to 10 years, and roughly half of that time disappears into permitting, before a single cable is laid. And partly because the system rewards the wrong behaviour. Many developers apply for more capacity than they will ever use, "just in case." Most countries still allocate that capacity strictly on a ‘first-come, first-served’-basis, with no way to move a strategically vital project in a TEN-T port or airport ahead of a "zombie" project; i. e. a stalled, speculative application that filed its paperwork years ago but never progressed.

T&E recommends that regulators: