Europe’s renewable energy capacity grew 30 per cent last year, but its recent successes are in danger of stalling unless the roadblock presented by byzantine and outdated planning rules is removed.

That is the stark conclusion of a major new report released today by PwC, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis. The report singles out the continent’s complex infrastructure planning and permits regime as the biggest single threat to the fast-expanding renewable sector in Europe and North Africa.

The report, Moving towards 100 per cent renewable electricity in Europe and North Africa, follows a study by the same group last year which concluded that it was technically feasible for the region to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.

The latest research reiterates that it is possible for a super grid to balance electricity supply and demand using only renewable sources, such as offshore wind farms in the North Sea, solar parks in the Mediterranean and North Africa, and stored hydroelectric facilities in Scandinavia.

But it warns that this scenario will not be realised without urgent and wide-ranging reforms to infrastructure planning regulations across Europe.

“We are now quickly approaching a point where further growth in renewables will be constrained by historical, political, market and social factors,” said Gus Schellekens, director, sustainability and climate change, at PwC. “The report has identified areas where immediate and concerted action is needed to enable this growth to continue and the delivery of ambitious longer-term government visions to remain on track.”

Most notably, the report recommends planning reforms designed to make it easier to erect the cross-border transmission lines that will be essential for managing intermittent energy supplies from wind farms and solar parks.

“Today it is barely possible to build a single transmission line, especially between countries, as a result of inefficient legislation and public opposition,” said Antonella Battaglini of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Unless we start to build the infrastructure for a SuperSmart Grid for Europe and North Africa quickly and efficiently, we can abandon the dream of reaching the 100 per cent renewables electricity system by 2050.”

The report also confirmed that encouraging policy environments and improvements in renewable energy technologies had resulted in renewable electricity capacity growing 30 per cent in Europe during 2010 to 23GW. The trend is expected to continue in the short term as new developments such as offshore wind farms, currently under construction or in the planning system, continue to come online.

“Despite uncertainty around regulation, rising energy demand, climate change regulation and technology, progress will continue to push against the technology boundaries,” said Schellekens. “Renewable technologies are being pushed to expansion by energy and market demand. Even if they have yet to be tested at full scale, wind or solar power have proved themselves as technologies in smaller-scale installations with established supplies in Spain, Germany and Italy.”

However, the analysis highlighted a number of other potential risks to the sector’s development. It noted that recent changes to feed-in tariff incentives in Germany, France, Spain and the UK could damage investor confidence, and warned it remained unclear how the recent revolutions in North Africa would affect proposals to import energy from solar farms in the Sahara to Europe.

“An important insight from this analysis is that progress towards achieving 100 per cent renewable electricity in Europe and North Africa may depend less on international climate negotiations than it does on a democratic outcome to the Arab Spring, or on efforts to increase the competitiveness of power markets for the benefit of European consumers,” observed Anthony Patt, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

By James Murray