1-Tech, under contract to EUREC, published the report “Deployment of innovative renewable energy technologies to 2030”, regarding innovative renewable technology which could be feasibly deployed by 2030.
The report analyzes a series of interviews conducted with high-level experts and representatives of European renewable energy industry counts the gigawatts of innovative technology which could be feasibly deployed by 2030.
Whether the Council or Ministers and European Parliament finally agree on 40% or 45% of renewables in final energy consumption by 2030, hundreds of gigawatts will have to be installed. 5% equates to tens of gigawatts, and companies are ready to deploy them if the conditions are right
1-Tech, while the report covers what specific current technologies would fit the European Parliament’s definition of “innovative” and in how many GW they could be deployed in the next 3 years given appropriate measures from the Member States.
The study showed that the industry has sufficient ambition and plans for technologies that fall under the European Parliament’s draft definition of “innovative renewable energy technology” to justify more than 5% of the overall goals of generation capacity from RES for 2030 given by the European Commission in the REPowerEU Communication COM (2022) 230, which called for 45% of final energy demand from renewables by that date.
The study indicates the lion’s share of innovative technology will be found in advanced photovoltaics and in floating offshore wind, but with credible ambitions (GW-scale) from other qualifying renewable energy technologies.
Floating wind to reach 10 GW by 2030
In windpower, all interviewees see floating offshore technologies as the leading contender for i-RES. Estimates for industry-wide deployment by 2030 are 10 to 20 GW cumulative by most technology and project developers interviewed up from today’s <0.2 GW.
For 2026, most individual developers’ ambitions are less than a GW even when allowing for FID (Final Investment Decision) and not COD (Commercial Operation Date, i.e. entry into operation/first power) as the criterion for inclusion.
A few of the companies interviewed are more bullish, especially for 2030, and one project developer has very much higher expectations. Ambitious new targets from a number of countries, some having been announced during the time of the interviews, may change this in the upward direction for both time frames considered.
Reported low estimates are mainly due to the long lead times characterising offshore wind projects and the time and effort needed for the scale-up of floating solutions from their current stage of pilot arrays, which are all less than 100 MW. Deployment is also held up by the perceived cost of most proposed floating technologies.
To put these numbers into context, the European Commission’s overall target for wind power is 480 GW for 2030, up from 189 GW by end 2021 of which 16 GW is offshore. Industry body Wind Europe expects 21.9 GW installed in 2022, projected to rise to 28 GW in 2026 in its “realistic expectations” scenario for Europe including the UK, Norway and Turkey.
EXPLORE MORE AT 1-Tech’S REPORT ON renewable energy
