Guterres Urges Grid Priority at COP31 in Antalya on November 12: 3,000 Gigawatts of Renewable Projects Stuck in Queues
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, addressing a COP31 high-level event on the Global Grids Accelerator in Antalya, Türkiye, on November 12, 2026, said that if renewables are the heart of the energy transition, grids are its arteries, and today those arteries are clogged. He urged putting grids at the centre of energy and development and increasing grid investment by 50 percent by 2030.
Some 3,000 gigawatts of advanced-stage renewable energy and battery projects are stuck in connection queues, a queue that grew by 60 percent in a single year and is four times the wind and solar capacity the world connected last year, Guterres said. A solar farm can be built in a year, while a new transmission line can take up to fifteen years to plan, permit and complete, and the bottleneck is tightest in developing countries. Building or upgrading more than 80 million kilometres of power lines is needed by 2040.
The Global Grids Accelerator, launched at the UN Climate Summit in September, brings the UN system together with governments, multilateral development banks and private finance, starting in Africa and Southeast Asia. Guterres concluded that the clean energy transition is accelerating, and the grids that carry it must accelerate with it. (Source: UN Secretary-General)
Source: UN Secretary-General
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：电网输电设施（资料图）。来源：GSM 图片库。 / Electricity grid transmission facilities (file photo). Source: GSM photo library.
