OPINION: Robotics are essential for Europe’s energy transition

Europe's energy transition narrative often revolves around renewable energy assets like solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and battery storage. However, the debate is shifting towards the challenges of operating and maintaining an expanding asset base over the next few decades. The high-margin subsidies that initially spurred industry growth are being phased out, leaving operators with low-margin operations on a large scale.

This, combined with the European workforce's demographic squeeze, makes the industry a prime candidate for automation, potentially including the use of robots.

Aging transmission networks, increasing cross-border capacity, offshore wind moving further from shore, and rapidly multiplying solar capacity all pose challenges to the operation of the energy sector. Skilled and physically demanding jobs like rope-access technicians, electrical engineers, subsea specialists, and offshore crews are difficult to scale and recruit for, given Europe's demographics.

On the other hand, the emergence of AI, specifically "physical AI" – which combines large models, computer vision, and machines capable of movement – offers a potential solution. Investments in robotics, task-specific platforms, and middleware for fleet management have started moving from research to early production.

Europe's energy operators are piloting these technologies, recognizing that raising output and reducing dependency on demographics can be achieved simultaneously. The focus is on enhancing productivity among existing employees by making them more efficient, delivering higher inspection outputs, designing systems that eliminate the need for crew entry into hostile environments, and facilitating maintenance work with minimal manual interventions. These advancements help scale the existing infrastructure even when the workforce cannot keep pace.

Europe is entering an era of unprecedented expansion, with solar capacity needing to grow by 107% by 2030, wind capacity up by 84%, electricity demand up by 60%, and transmission capacity roughly tripling. To achieve this, approximately 150 million solar panels and 150,000 wind turbines need to be installed and maintained, alongside an aging asset base. With around €600 billion in grid investment required between now and the end of the decade, the operating costs become a significant concern.

The cost of robotics hardware has been decreasing, making it more viable for this type of work. LiDAR prices are projected to fall from around €4,297 to €1,203 by 2040, actuator costs have roughly halved, and battery packs are near €92.81/kWh. Moreover, inference at the edge is becoming more cost-effective, costing just a few cents per hour.

Autonomy in robotics has also improved, with transformer-based approaches reducing the number of demonstrations needed to teach a new task from tens of thousands to just a few dozen, largely achieved through simulation before deployment near live substations.