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The boss of one of Europe’s largest grid operators has warned that too many speculative and unprepared projects are holding up grid connections for critical energy projects and causing years-long queues.

Bernard Gustin, chief executive of Elia Group, which operates the Belgian and parts of the German grid, said that operators of network infrastructure should be able to allocate connections to projects that are ready, rather than those that applied first.

‘‘I think in Belgium we have 10 times more projects [than] needed until 2030,” he said, referring to battery storage projects. “If you change from first come, first served to first ready, first served, then you will focus on the ones who are really serious because they have everything [ready].”

Grid connections have become a huge issue for European countries. Many are trying to manage a rapid increase in demand for grid access as more industrial plants and households install wind and solar power that can go into the grid, as well as an increasing number of applications from data centres to use energy from it.

In some countries, such as the Netherlands, queues to be connected to the grid stretch more than seven years. In Slovakia, about 50 per cent of capacity reserved for connection remains unused, according to commission figures. In Germany, there are twice as many requests to add battery storage to the grid as is planned in the country’s grid development plan, an Elia Group report found.

The rollout of renewables in the EU has outpaced the infrastructure needed to support it, as countries race to meet renewable energy targets set by Brussels and move away from imported fossil fuels. The European Commission has estimated that €1.2tn needs to be spent on the EU’s grids by 2040 in order to support the transition.

Gustin said that grid operators are competing for funding to rapidly build out networks and upgrade infrastructure to balance the volatility of wind and solar energy.

After years of stagnant investment levels, “we all have huge capex plans, so big that you need to be able to finance them, which is a challenge”, he said.

Costs from grid congestion — where cheap electricity cannot flow to where demand is so people have to pay for higher cost sources — are rising. Acer, the EU energy regulator, has said that they reached €5.2bn in 2022 and could rise to €26bn by 2030.

In a document published in December, Brussels set out recommendations to prioritise connections to the grid. The commission also said that it would take a more top-down approach to energy infrastructure planning in order to accelerate the build-out and ensure costs were shared between EU countries.

“In Europe it’s a huge problem and we lose billions every year in lost value because of curtailment and bottlenecks,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen told the Financial Times.

In a report on energy storage, Elia Group found that the first 100GW of installed batteries in Europe would reduce the curtailment of renewable power by 13 per cent, meaning that 13 per cent more power would be available.

Elia plans to spend €31.6bn on grid upgrades until 2028, split roughly one-third to Belgium and two-thirds to its German arm. To deal with connection demands from batteries, data centres and renewable energy installations could cost an additional €10bn, Gustin estimated.

“These are not small amounts . . . you have a lot of people saying we don’t want tariffs to go up on energy, electricity is not competitive. And so we have a first challenge [which] is how do we make sure, given the amounts we need to raise, that we have a competitive return on equity?”

Gustin, who was formerly chief executive of Brussels Airlines, oversaw a €2.2bn capital raise earlier this year, bringing in investors such as BlackRock and the Canadian pension fund CPP.

Often the length of time it takes to grant permits for infrastructure projects is seen as a risk factor by investors, he said, with permitting times in Belgium running up to eight years.

“By [that] time inflation and the price have increased and some investors are telling you these were not the conditions we had at the start, we cannot continue,” he said.

The EU’s recent legislation aims to speed up permitting times by setting time limits for permit deliberations and proposing that energy projects should be seen as having an overriding interest.

More than three-quarters of economists expect the US to maintain or widen its productivity lead over the rest of the world, because of artificial intelligence, deep capital markets and relatively low energy costs, a Financial Times survey has found.

In the global poll, 31 per cent of 183 respondents thought the US would retain its advantage in productivity, while another 48 per cent expected the country to increase its dominance.  

The economists were based in China, the Eurozone, the UK and the US.

Productivity growth — which measures progress in converting inputs such as hours worked into goods and services — ultimately allows companies to increase wages and profits, improving living standards.

US labour productivity rose 10 per cent between 2019 and 2024, thanks to rapid technological advances and the reallocation of workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. By contrast, it remained largely stagnant in the UK and Eurozone, according to OECD data.

Jumana Saleheen, head of Vanguard’s investment strategy group in Europe, said US productivity was set to “pull away from other developed market economies” thanks to the country’s dynamic capital markets, flexible labour force and lead in emerging technologies.

She added that Europe risked “falling further behind”, with research and development still heavily focused on traditional sectors such as automotive and pharmaceuticals.

Saleheen also noted structural challenges for the EU, including fragmented infrastructure, more rigid labour markets and less supportive capital markets.

The US economy is set for the strongest growth in the G7 this year, according to the OECD — buoyed by a tech-led investment boom and stock market gains that are bolstering wealth and spending among better-off households.

The gains have helped counter some of the economic damage done by US President Donald Trump’s trade wars but have also raised fears of an unsustainable AI-related bubble.

The FT survey, which was carried out in December, suggests economists do not expect the trends powering US outperformance to be reversed soon.

AI and related digital technologies were the new productivity frontier, said Nina Skero, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, and the US’s “position as a leader in investment and development of these technologies will extend the US’s productivity lead”.

The trend is supported by a divergence in business investment. In the US, investment jumped 24 per cent in the second quarter of 2025 compared with the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. It contracted 7 per cent over that time in the Eurozone, according to Oxford Economics.

Some economists surveyed by the FT warned that the surge in AI investment could reflect a “bubble” — a term mentioned 25 times in responses — and cautioned that a sharp correction might weigh on US output and productivity.

A reversal in the stock market gains made by US tech could also have international repercussions via tighter financial conditions, softer external demand and rising risk aversion, some economists said.

But the majority of respondents to the poll, which represented the UK and Eurozone more heavily than China and the US, still expected America to maintain its productivity edge globally. Overall, the poll surveyed 207 economists, although not all responded to every question.

The US was starting from a “position of strength” in the productivity race, said Thomas Simons, chief US economist at Jefferies.

Respondents also pointed to the US’s structurally lower and more predictable energy costs, flexible labour market and large domestic economy.

The US benefits from “structurally lower and more predictable energy costs than Europe and many Asian economies, underpinned by an administration that treats energy policy as a driver of economic prosperity rather than a vehicle for moral posturing at the expense of growth and living standards,” said Martin Beck, chief economist at the consultancy WPI Strategy.

Europe is widely seen by economists as constrained by over-regulation, weaker investment, rigid labour markets and a business environment less favourable to cutting-edge technologies. The UK had the additional weight of the Brexit legacy to deal with, some economists contended.

“While the US and others have made major strides in AI, the UK has spent much of the last decade chasing the Brexit tail, diverting attention and resources from innovation,” said Evarist Stoja, professor of finance at the University of Bristol Business School.

Experts acknowledge that the US faces rising AI competition from Asia. “Other countries — particularly in Asia — will move to the frontier, meaning that the relative advantage of the US will erode somewhat but will not be eliminated,” said Jagjit S Chadha, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge. 

China has the second-largest cumulative venture capital investment in AI since 2012 after the US and over three times more than the EU, according to the OECD.

The US may be at the forefront of the AI wave, but “much of this may prove a misallocation of resources,” said David Owen, chief economist at Saltmarsh Economics. “Ultimately, much of the benefits will go to the users of the technology (elsewhere), not the early-stage innovators.”

Many economists also highlighted risks from US trade protectionism, restrictive immigration policies, fiscal imbalances and political instability that could eventually undermine productivity growth. 

US productivity gains from trade “have been traded away for chump change tariff revenues”, warned Robert Barbera, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Financial Economics.

Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College in London, warned that a “toxic combination” of tariffs, an erosion of the quality of US government administration and anti-immigration policy would “over time do significant damage to the US economy”.

Additional reporting from Olaf Storbeck, Claire Jones and Thomas Hale