Electricity grids are essential for integrating renewable electricity - but expanding grid infrastructure also causes additional emissions. Here, you can explore the results of our paper on the environmental impacts of Germany's grid expansion (XXX et al.), focusing on the climate change impact and what it originates from.
Let's explore the results, starting with the status quo - you can see the current figures of Germany's grid infrastructure on the right. Overall, building today's grid caused about 64 Mt CO₂ equivalents of climate change impacts. To explore where this impact originates from, just scroll down.
The diagram on the right shows how much each component contributes to the overall impact, what materials these impacts relate to and what processes are the actual emitters in the upstream supply chains.
Feel free to interactively explore the chart by hovering or clicking on parts of the diagram. If you scroll further down, we'll walk you through some results we find interesting.
Over 80% of the grid’s climate impact in 2023 came from conducting equipment — overhead lines (47.6%) and cables (35.9%). Aluminium is the main culprit here, with its high upstream electricity demand.
About a third of overhead line impacts come from masts, mainly due to iron and steel production. These emissions are largely direct (from blast furnaces), but electricity matters, too.
Ironically, electricity production itself is one of the main contributors to the grid's carbon footprint — because it’s needed to produce aluminum, copper, steel, and insulation materials (plastics).
However, as the electricity mix decarbonizes in the future, the footprint of grid components will shrink...
With more renewable electricity available, and, more broadly speaking, a general transition towards greener supply chains, the carbon footprint of grid components will decrease. At the same time, however, more grid infrastructure needs to be build to support the energy transition.
So, let's investigate. Next up, we take a look at how the grids climate change impact changes due to the planned future grid expansion, not accounting for the changing production system (yet).
As Germany's electricity grid expands more and more in the coming years, the associated climate impact of it's infrastructure will also rise. So far, so expected.
But what happens if we take into account that supply chains decarbonize over time? What will be the net effect on the grid's carbon footprint?
Accounting for the increasing transitions in global supply chains, the carbon footprint of grid infrastructure in the future will decrease. In the underlying scenario we used here, production systems progressively decarbonize, so grid components built further in the future can benefit more.
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