Strategic Grid Technologies for European Resilience: Blueprints for acceleration
25 April 2025
Author: Aetlan
Aetlan released a new report for EIES, Strategic Grid Technologies for European Resilience: Blueprints for acceleration, calling for the development at scale of strategic grid technologies in Europe, including distributed energy resources, power asset software platforms, and drones for infrastructure resilience.
Energy infrastructure in Europe is now buffeted by gale forces in geopolitics, climate, and technology not felt in decades. The ongoing turbulence raises urgent questions about Europe’s resilience. The strategies, policies and global shocks that brought us to this situation must be considered. In particular, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted risky dependencies and macro-level threats. Europe should now focus on developing technologies that address strategic risks to its security, improve technological resilience and benefit European competitiveness.
This report focuses on concrete steps to address an important subset of the broader challenge to European industrial competitiveness: accelerating electric-sector technology entrepreneurship in Europe through 2030. The paper explores technologies that could improve Europe's energy infrastructure resilience and reduce risks to energy and economic security. The report assesses three scalable electric grid technology categories: distributed energy resources (DERs), power asset software platforms, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for infrastructure analysis. These categories are uniquely suited for rapid acceleration and consolidation in Europe. Moreover, they are test cases for energy-industrial technology entrepreneurship in Europe, while building resilience into the electric sector. The paper then reviews best practices required for lasting energy-industrial technology commercialisation, addressing the pervasive problem of innovation theatre in Europe.
We find that the acceleration of energy-industrial technology commercialisation in Europe, especially in the electric sector, will require world-class teams spanning technical talent pools across the region, technological superiority demonstrated through benchmarks against global competitors, and a step change in commercial expertise and the wherewithal to quickly navigate fragmented markets worldwide. The historical approaches around energy-industrial technology do not serve these objectives, and irrespective of the present maelstrom, fundamental change is long overdue.