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New UN initiative renews focus on power grids

  • Märkte: Electricity, Emissions
  • 23.09.26

The UN today launched a new initiative to help encourage and accelerate investment in electricity grid infrastructure in Africa and southeast Asia.

The Global Grids Accelerator initiative will focus on grid priorities that governments have identified and help turn these into "investable, operational projects", the UN said. The new facility will not create a new finance institution, but it will bring together "relevant policy, technical, financing and implementation partners" to move grid plans to implementation, it added.

"Renewables are booming, but the grids that carry clean power are not keeping pace. Grids are the arteries of the energy transition," UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said. Power grid constraints can "delay new power generation, constrain industrial growth, and slow efforts to expand access to reliable and affordable electricity", he added.

Power grids are "one of the biggest bottlenecks in the global energy transition", Guterres said. Over 2,500GW of renewable energy projects are "stalled in grid-connection queues worldwide", he said.

Energy watchdog the IEA in May found that annual global investment in grids reached $450bn in 2025, but noted that part of the rise reflected "inflationary pressures on grid equipment" rather than new infrastructure.

A key barrier to grid development is turning plans into "investable projects" and connecting these to "affordable finance", the UN said.

The UN initiative dovetails with a major goal, proposed by Turkey, host of the UN Cop 31 climate summit in November. The Turkish Cop presidency has put forward a global target for electricity to reach 35pc of global final energy consumption by 2035, up from around 20pc at present.

To reach this goal would require increased investment in grids, among other measures, the IEA said yesterday, setting out a pathway to the target.


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