Worldwide, over 3,000 gigawatts of renewable projects are waiting to be connected to the grid because there are no lines or existing grids are not powerful enough.¹ That’s about three times the total power plant capacity available in the EU. So regenerative generation has long since been around. What’s missing are the lines that bring the power to where it’s needed.

This challenge does not stop at national borders. In Germany, the share of renewable energies in domestic grid feed-in is currently around 60 percent.¹ More and more countries are thinking bigger about the next step: across countries and even continents. This mission statement is called “Global Grids”. At klimaVest, we are monitoring the development closely, as it directly affects the backbone of the energy transition.

What are global grids?

The term describes an idea that includes several stages. At the beginning are the national transmission networks, such as the Amprion company in Germany, in which our klimaVest fund holds an indirect stake. This is the basis for cross-border connections, so-called interconnectors, which connect neighbouring networks. The most far-reaching stage is cross-continental alliances that connect generation regions and consumption centres over thousands of kilometres.

The international vision behind this is called the “Green Grids Initiative - One Sun, One World, One Grid”. The project was launched in 2021 at the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, India and the UK.² The guiding principle: The sun never goes down. Somewhere on earth it always shines and somewhere there’s always wind. By connecting these sources across time zones, you can direct electricity to places where it is dark or weak. So much for the theory. It becomes exciting to see what global grids can do and where their limits lie.

Compensating for volatility, overcoming distances

Wind and sun do not deliver what is needed at the push of a button. When viewed across individual regions, their production varies with the weather, time of day and season. Above all, the so-called dark flea is feared: those periods when neither the sun is shining nor the wind is blowing, sometimes over the days.

This is precisely where global grids come in as transnational or transcontinental power grids. A geographically dispersed mix of different generation sources balances different temperature ranges, weather conditions and time zones.³ What is missing in one place may be in excess in another. The larger the compound, the more stable the supply.

The picture behind it is compelling: Solar power from the North African desert flows via long sea cables to wherever there is demand in Europe. Sunny production where it’s cheap, consumption where it’s needed. However, whether such connections actually succeed over thousands of kilometres depends on more than just the technology.

Security of supply and geopolitical independence

A second argument for the implementation of global grids has been particularly important for several years. Sharing electricity with neighbours makes you more independent of individual suppliers and fossil fuel markets.
Europe’s closely interconnected electricity system has proven this several times over. When numerous French nuclear power plants had to be maintained at the same time in 2022, France was able to import electricity from Spain and the UK. And when Ukraine in the same year urgently moved ahead of synchronisation with the continental European power grid within hours, the alliance helped to cushion power outages caused by the war.³

The Baltic countries provided an impressive example from last year. In February 2025, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania uncoupled from the post-Soviet BRELL power ring, which was controlled from Moscow, among other places, and also synchronised with the continental European network.⁴ The step was backed by 15 years of preparation and a clear motive: Energy supply should no longer be suitable as a means of political pressure.