Three takeaways from Eurelectric and EY's 2024 Grids for Speed report

Eurelectric and EY published Grids for Speed in 2024. It’s a dense report. Here’s what we think matters for operators.

1. Electricity demand is not a projections problem — it’s an investment problem now.

The report puts electricity at 60% of total energy demand in a fully electrified society, up from roughly 20% today. That shift doesn’t require a forecast to act on. The investment decisions required to support it are happening now, in capital programs that are already funded or already stalled.

What operators are finding: the GIS is either an accelerant or a bottleneck in those programs. A Smallworld Geo Network Management (GNM) environment with clean topology, validated asset data, and a working SAP integration moves a capital program forward. One that doesn’t have those things adds months.

2. €67 billion per year is a number with consequences.

Distribution-grid investment of €67B annually through 2050 — in the EU and Norway alone — is the scale the report identifies. Most of that investment lands on networks that still run on incomplete or unvalidated asset data.

The implication isn’t that every utility needs to fix its GIS before it can invest. It’s that the utilities that do fix it will execute their capital programs faster and cheaper than the ones that don’t. Source: Eurelectric & EY, Grids for Speed, 2024.

3. Speed is the metric. Not just reliability.

The report’s framing is useful: grids need to be built faster, not just built better. That reframes what GIS accuracy means. It’s not a data quality issue. It’s a program velocity issue. Clean network models accelerate permitting, construction, and integration. They reduce rework. They let field crews and regulators trust the same source of record.

That’s the argument for taking Smallworld GNM seriously as infrastructure, not just as software.