As countries around the world make progress towards decarbonisation, more sectors are shifting to cleaner, renewable resources. The grids, crucial infrastructure for decarbonising the power sector and the overall economy, are increasingly struggling as capacity grows scarce in some regions.

National regulators seeking to ease this lack of capacity can address the bottlenecks through regulatory tools to allocate or reallocate remaining grid capacity, make better use of existing capacity and create new grid capacity.

The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) and the Energy Regulators Regional Association (ERRA) offer support to policymakers and regulators facing challenges such as clogged connection request queues, rising congestion management costs and the curtailment of available renewable energy sources.

We delve into solutions and lessons learned, including

• An overview of regulatory tools, such as RAP’s Grid scarcity toolbox.
• Case studies exploring
  • Hosting capacity maps in Belgium for (re)allocating remaining grid capacities.
  • Shared connection, or ‘cable pooling,’ strategies in Poland for improving the use of existing grid capacities.
  • Competitive renewable energy zones in the U.S. state of Texas for creating new grid capacities.
• An overview of grid scarcity and actions to address it in selected ERRA member countries.
• Recommendations for policymakers and regulators.