By Javier Cavada, President & CEO, Mitsubishi Power
Europe’s challenge today is not technology or investment appetite. It is a lack of speed.
Europe’s energy transition is facing a silent crisis of execution. The technologies exist. Capital is available. Yet one of the greatest obstacles to delivering Europe’s energy transition is no longer technological innovation. It is our ability to build critical infrastructure quickly enough.
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SubscribeToday, one of the biggest threats to Europe’s competitiveness and energy security is the way strategic energy projects progress through regulatory and legal systems. Too often, critical infrastructure becomes caught in regulatory gridlock, where projects spend years navigating permitting requirements, approval processes and legal challenges before construction can even begin.
If Europe is to deliver a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system, we need legal and regulatory frameworks to accelerate, rather than delay, the energy transition. Strategic energy infrastructure should increasingly be recognised as critical national infrastructure, reflecting its central role in meeting Europe’s economic, energy security and decarbonisation objectives.
The urgency is clear. The scale of investment and deployment required to meet Europe’s climate and energy goals is unprecedented. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), meeting electricity demand through 2030 will require annual global grid investment to increase by approximately 50% from today’s level of around US$400 billion. At the same time, the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) establishes a binding target for renewable energy to account for at least 42.5% of the EU’s gross final energy consumption by 2030. Achieving those goals will be exceedingly difficult if strategically important projects remain trapped in lengthy permitting and approval processes.
The necessary capital is ready for deployment. Private developers have hundreds of billions of euros available to invest in new transmission networks, offshore wind farms, solar projects, energy storage systems and flexible power generation. Yet a growing gap remains between political ambition and the pace at which projects are being delivered. For example, Great Britain’s grid connection pipeline currently contains 283 GW of generation and storage projects. This number is equivalent to more than 250% of the country’s entire existing installed generation and storage capacity.
A need for speed, but the gap is becoming larger
Across Europe, regulatory complexity and lengthy legal processes have turned infrastructure development into an increasingly unpredictable business risk. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has reported that permitting timelines can reach up to 9 years for onshore wind projects and around 5 years for utility-scale solar projects in some jurisdictions.
This creates a fundamental disconnect. A wind farm or solar project can often be constructed in a matter of months. Yet the permitting, approvals and legal processes that precede construction can take years, even close to a decade. In many cases, the development process takes far longer than construction itself.
The consequences extend well beyond project schedules. Europe is increasingly unable to make full use of the clean electricity it generates or deliver the infrastructure needed to support the energy transition. A 2025 report from Aurora Energy Research found that 72TWH of predominantly renewable electricity was curtailed across Europe in 2024 due to grid bottlenecks, roughly equivalent to Austria’s annual electricity consumption. Similar barriers have also affected efforts to replace coal-fired generation with lower-carbon, more flexible gas capacity. In the UK, plans to replace Drax’s remaining coal units with up to 3.6 GW of gas-fired generation faced significant opposition before being abandoned in 2021.
Modern and advanced combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants massively reduce CO₂ emissions when replacing coal plants, while they provide the flexible generation and energy security needed to support growing volumes of wind and solar power. Removing barriers to both grid and generation infrastructure will therefore be critical to delivering Europe’s energy transition.
The UK offers a practical example
The UK government’s recent decision to strengthen protections for strategically important energy infrastructure reflects a more pragmatic approach.
Historically, the time required for UK energy projects to secure a Development Consent Order (DCO) increased by around 65% over a single decade. In response, the government launched its Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) Reform Programme to accelerate decision-making and streamline the consenting process.
Equally important, the UK’s updated National Policy Statements now recognise key net zero infrastructure as a Critical National Priority. This provides greater clarity for planning authorities and the courts by recognising that nationally important infrastructure should be considered within the wider context of economic resilience, energy security and long-term public interest.
This does not mean removing environmental protections or weakening democratic accountability. Those safeguards remain essential. Nor can we allow legitimate scrutiny to lead to years of unnecessary delay.
This problem is not limited to wind and solar projects. Hydrogen-enabled gas turbines can play an important role in the transition away from coal-fired generation, delivering decarbonisation and efficiency benefits compared to coal and oil. However, there are multiple examples across Europe where upgrades, new projects and capacity auctions for gas plants have been severely delayed by legal or regulatory hurdles.
Europe needs more predictable permitting systems, clearer statutory timelines and limits on repetitive legal challenges that add little public value while increasing project risk.
If Europe wants to strengthen its industrial competitiveness, other countries should consider adopting similar approaches. Recognising strategic energy infrastructure as critical national infrastructure is no longer simply an energy policy decision. It is an economic and geopolitical necessity.
The cost of inaction is growing. The European Parliament has highlighted that the EU still imports roughly 60% of its total energy requirements, leaving businesses and consumers exposed to external market volatility. Delivering infrastructure at that scale will require planning and legal systems that move at the same pace as Europe’s ambitions.
Whether it is wind, solar or turbine solutions, the technology needed for Europe’s energy transition is already in place. The real challenge now is execution. Europe’s legal frameworks were designed for a different era. Today, they must support a faster, more integrated approach to infrastructure delivery while maintaining the environmental standards and public engagement that remain fundamental to every major project.
If Europe wants to achieve decarbonisation while strengthening affordability, competitiveness and energy security, it must become just as effective at delivering infrastructure as it has been at designing it. The success of Europe’s energy transition will ultimately depend not just on what we build, but on how quickly we are able to build it.
Speed and simplicity, please.
