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A European Supergrid for Energy Security

From the series The world energy battle

In her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a European supergrid project: A new plan that we will present in February aimed at reducing energy prices will remove any remaining barriers to our Energy Union [Euractiv, January 21st].

The lesson of the Spanish blackout

The blackout in Spain has highlighted the need for an integrated European grid. According to Stephen Magennis, Global Head of E&U (Energy and Utilities) at Expleo, an engineering services company, the supergrid is an interconnected network of high-voltage transmission lines that will allow a large-scale exchange of electricity, particularly renewable energy, across countries.

A supergrid would enhance the bargaining power of the European Union in global energy geopolitics: if not ensuring independence, which is hard to achieve, it would contribute to reducing Europe’s reliance on natural gas imports from Russia, the United States, and North Africa.

Technological and scientific development enables the exploitation of renewable energy sources to a degree that was not possible decades ago. In the North Sea, there are wind turbines almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Today it is possible to build electrical grids of over a million volts, capable of overcoming the geographical specificity of various renewable resources [“The Challenges of Electrification”, Internationalism, August-September 2022; “Sfida cinese sulle lunghe distanze”, Lotta Comunista, October 2022].

The supergrid is the material content of the ideological forms of ecological transition. Behind the ideology of saving the planet from fossil fuels lies the reality of securing energy autonomy and security for European imperialism.

Ultra-High-Voltage Direct-Current (UHVDC) technology enables the transmission of large quantities of energy over long distances, allowing long stretches of sea to be crossed and more interconnections between existing grids. For example, electricity generated by solar panels in Spain can be consumed immediately in Norway. Wind blowing off the coast of Sweden can be used to power Portugal’s electricity grid. In this system, lithium-ion batteries would provide stability to the grid by storing excess energy that can be fed back into the supergrid and used when needed.

The North Sea wind farm

The North Sea could become the largest power station in the world [Politico, April 23rd, 2023]. A record-breaking wind farm will be built in the region, aimed at reducing Europe’s energy dependence on other areas, particularly Russian and American natural gas.

In April 2023, nine European countries (Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and the United Kingdom) met in the Belgian port city of Ostend, with the objective of accelerating the development of renewable energy in the North Sea. The region, historically a centre of oil production, is now seen as a major source of offshore wind energy, and is a hub for the development of wind farms at sea. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen participated in the signing of a declaration in which the countries committed to accelerating offshore wind projects, in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and Moscow’s use of energy as a weapon. According to von der Leyen, Europe has become the home of renewable energy, and the North Sea is becoming Europe’s power station. In his comments before the meeting, then Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stated that energy is a geopolitical issue.

Currently, connections between national electricity grids are fragmented, limited in capacity, and unable to keep up with the growing supply of renewable energy. According to research from University College Dublin, a supergrid could lead to a 32% reduction in energy costs across the continent. The European Commission estimates that investment in the grid will reach €600 billion by 2030.

Interconnected, stable electrical grids are the backbone of a functioning energy market. The European Union already has one of the most extensive and resilient grids in the world, stretching over eleven million kilometres, but this is not sufficient for an electricity consumption that is expected to increase by around 60% between now and 2030. Furthermore, it also risks becoming obsolete, as, according to figures presented by the European Commission, 40% of the power plants and electricity transmission lines in the EU are already over 40 years old.

The term super denotes the character of the grid as European, rather than national. Until now grids, even when interconnected, have been national. Supra-national connections served to correct imbalances, but they were not structural. There was no need for planners to think beyond their own borders, because fossil fuels could be transported and burned within each State. Renewables require a supranational structure, because the only means of transporting this form of energy is via the electricity grid: there is no other pragmatic way to bring North Sea wind energy to Spain or Italy, or solar energy from Mediterranean countries to Northern countries. Without a supergrid, it is not possible to exploit the full potential of renewable energy, which is currently at a standstill. Today, the fundamental problem is not production, but transport to the place of consumption, which is why renewables production capacity is underutilised. In the European Union’s gross final electricity consumption, the share of electricity from renewables has remained unchanged, at 24%, over the last fifteen years.

Superconductivity: a new frontier in technology

In addition to aerial transmission using UHVDC lines, the new technology of superconductors is also paving the way for the supergrid. Media attention is often focused on developments in space, like Elon Musk’s Starlink system, but there is a new frontier of science and technology on land and under the sea, which sets out to address the energy issue: superconductors.

The European Union’s Superconducting CAbles for sUstainable Energy Transition (SCARLET) project brings together fifteen partners from seven countries, with the aim of designing and producing superconducting cables that enable more efficient and cost-effective energy transmission from renewable energy production sites [Journal of Petroleum Technology, January 27th, 2023]. The project has secured funding for four and a half years from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon that occurs when certain materials are cooled to very low temperatures, about 196 degrees Celsius below zero, enabling the transmission of energy without loss due to the Joule effect. Superconducting cables must be cooled using liquid nitrogen or other coolants to be able to conduct electricity without resistance.

On September 28th and 29th, 2022, the industrial partners Absolut System, ASG Superconductors, Nexans, RINA Consulting, SuperGrid Institute, SuperNode, and Vision Electric Super Conductors gathered at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. There they launched the SCARLET project, along with research institutes and universities including ESPCI (France), IASS and RSE (Italy), SINTEF (Norway), IEE of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the University of Bologna, and WavEC (Portugal). ASG Superconductors, based in Italy, is one of the world leaders in the design, construction, and testing of superconducting magnetic systems.

Superconducting cables are already in operation in Germany, the United States, and South Korea over distances up to 5 km. The challenge is to design, prototype and produce cables capable of conducting electricity over hundreds of kilometres, and to keep them cold. The industrialisation of the science and technology of ultra-high-voltage electricity grids and superconductors would make an integrated European electrical structure possible, which is an essential component of an economic and political union.

Lotta Comunista, June 2025

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