The Drop 2026 on energy and the grid
In short
The grid sits half idle while new users queue for years
Across 17 sessions on energy and the grid, the quickest capacity was the kind already installed, and the one buyer paying for speed wanted its own.
Seen as a machine, the grid runs at 40 or 50% of its capacity, Rushad Nanavatty said on Raw Green, and no factory owner would accept that from a piece of equipment. At another session, a participant said Sweden had once estimated €100bn of grid build-out, then realised that only about 20% of its grid capacity is used on an average day. Yet the UK, the Netherlands and Germany have connection queues of up to a decade, and an industrial company on a Baltic island may wait another three years to expand.
That contradiction ran through the 17 sessions on energy and the grid. The Drop's theme asked whether the data centres, power systems and factories now being financed will come online in time to earn back what they cost. The sessions kept finding that the quickest capacity is already installed and lacks a buyer, while the one customer that pays for speed would sooner build its own.
A few dozen hours
The shortage is of power at the peak. At the Ripple on energy power plays, a battery founder called the confusion between kilowatt-hours and kilowatts one of the greatest in the energy business, and a consultant said the strain falls on a handful of hours, or a few dozen. A data centre that accepts about 60 hours of curtailment a year and brings its own battery is connected faster.
Rushad made the same case at the negawatts Ripple. RMI estimates that 190 of the 270 gigawatts of new peak capacity the US needs over ten years could come from efficiency, virtual power plants and grid-enhancing technologies. American water heaters alone store about as much energy as the country's grid batteries. In Utrecht, Claire Miller said on PT1 Live, 500 shared Renault 5s balance the congested Dutch grid when nobody is driving them.
Part of the reason it goes unused is how grid owners are paid. In Sweden, a founder said, a distribution operator earns more by building new grid. US utilities, a growth investor said, earn a return on what they build. At the grid software Ripple, the lesson was to follow the operator's accounts. A tool that cuts operating costs can hurt a buyer whose regulator trims its operating budget every year, so tie the software to capital upgrades, or add hardware.
The buyer that pays for time
The data centre is the exception. An AI infrastructure company came to Jamie Beard's Project InnerSpace because it faced an eight-year wait for gas turbines, Jamie said at the second geothermal Ripple. It did not care about geothermal. It wanted power. At the Ripple on whether to fix the grid or build around it, a founder developing small nuclear plants said investors now ask whether the company could deliver power six months or a year earlier, because availability matters more than price. Of the company's first offtaker, the founder said, "It's not that they want off-grid power, they want to be masters of their own house."
The two geothermal Ripples disagreed over who will build for that demand. At the first, Sarah Black of Alfa8 said the oil majors are unlikely to come in until next-generation projects prove profitable. Later that day, Jamie said at least three majors have quietly built geothermal divisions and now ask when to get in, not if. A founder who makes drill bits still wanted a second supplier outside oil and gas.
The limits showed too. Data centres that make their own power keep a grid link for uptime. In Frankfurt, an off-grid data centre on gas turbines won its approvals and was then blocked after two residents calculated that its emissions would exceed half those of Frankfurt Airport. Orbit is no shortcut either. Karol Szubstarski of OTB Ventures said launch would have to fall from about $3,000 a kilogram to perhaps $200 before data centres in space add up.
The demand itself may disappoint. Ethan Sohn of Toyota's venture arm recalled that the 60 to 100 gigawatts of extra demand forecast in 2020 for electric vehicles by 2030 did not arrive, and that forecasts of AI data-centre demand to 2028 now differ by about 250 gigawatts.
Bought for something else
Away from data centres, almost nobody pays a premium. Manufacturers buy uptime and lower costs, and the carbon cut comes along, practitioners said at the factory buyers' Ripple. There is no water premium, just as there is no green premium, a founder said at the water Ripple, even as mines shut for lack of water. At the electric stack Ripple, a founder said of European resilience, "Everyone is talking about it, but no one is willing to pay the premium that's needed for it."
Clean heat fails on payback. At the industrial-heat role play, RMI's modelling put the payback on renewable heat at about 15 years, while industrial companies are used to two or three. A heat pump is about three times as efficient as a gas boiler, but in most of Europe outside the Nordics electricity costs about three times as much as gas, a corporate investor said at the Ripple on powering industry.
What sells is a fallback. The first movers there keep the gas boiler and add an electric one or heat storage beside it, hedging against price spikes. Data centres keep the grid. At the resilience Ripple, a participant from a large South Korean company said redundancy is never the most efficient choice, but it is how things should be. Europe's question, they said, is its baseline level of resilience.
Europe's seat
Europe's battery makers imported Chinese production lines and got about 70% of what they needed, Vera Kunz of Ahren Innovation Capital said at the battery Ripple, the machinery without the process know-how. On The New Nuclear Podcast, Johan Christian Sollid said Europe can enrich about 150% of its own consumption, and Klaus Nyengaard said what holds nuclear back is political.
The electric stack Ripple saw Europe's opening in the layer that controls the hardware China builds. A co-founder whose software runs batteries and solar from any maker said of the race, "Let them build, let us control." The resilience Ripple saw the same layer as the weak point. A fleet of 100,000 assets may look decentralised and still behave like one large central asset to anyone with common access, Till Stenzel of SET Ventures said, because firmware and control run back through a few shared platforms. The layer Europe hopes to own is the one it most needs to secure.
None of the sessions settled who pays to use what is already there. In the UK, Claire said, a driver who lets an aggregator decide when the car charges can earn £300–400 a year, and most drivers do not know it. The budget car of the future may be free, provided its owner always plugs it in. How big the reward must be before a driver signs up, Claire could not say. The same question hangs over the water heaters, the heat batteries and the idle half of the grid. Data centres have shown what speed is worth to them. Nobody has yet worked out what it is worth to everyone else.