The Challenge of Affordability: Making One Grid Everyone's Grid

Yet, a recent, incredibly candid message from a dear colleague, Michael Heyeck, set a profound question before me. As Michael prepares to conclude his outstanding six-year term as CIGRE Treasurer at the end of this month, his thoughts were understandably focused on the intersection of engineering and economics. He asked: In our noble race to build the grid of tomorrow, are we forgetting the very people we are building it for? Are we missing the critical variable of affordability?
​As engineers, our professional identity is anchored in a quiet but powerful credo: to advance societal benefits for the common good. Electricity is not a luxury; it is foundational to human dignity, economic equity, and societal progress. Today, we find ourselves amid the most exciting energy transition in human history. But as electric demand surges beyond our wildest expectations, capacity markets struggle to incentivize supply, and infrastructure is challenged at every layer from the ultra-high voltage line down to the household meter, all roads inevitably collide at the barrier of cost.

Too often, the discourse surrounding the transition falls into the trap of pedestrian politics. Terms like climate change and sustainability are frequently viewed through ideological lenses, parsed by politicians, or obscured by shifting subsidies. But our credo calls us to transcend politics and face engineering realities. Should we cut emissions? Yes. Should we design for deep sustainability? Absolutely. But a solution that is technically flawless yet economically out of reach for the average consumer is not a solution at all—it is a failure of design.
​I firmly believe that engineers can solve any problem that is transparently stated and clearly seen. The challenge I put before the CIGRE family today is to explicitly write affordability back into our primary equations. It cannot remain an afterthought, left to the vagaries of markets or the benevolence of government handouts. It must become a core engineering discipline.

When we evaluate the expanding landscape of generation, storage, and cross-border transmission, we must look beyond mere technical viability. We must ask whether these solutions are scalable in a truly equitable sense. True sustainability requires us to account for the total lifecycle costs—from raw material supply chains to the efficiency of our basic electrical architecture. Is it time, for instance, to rethink our end-use cycles and address the inherent inefficiencies of multi-layered power conversions? These are the transparent problems we must dare to look at.
​This challenge goes far beyond physical wires. It touches how infrastructure is valued and financed. To truly address affordability, we must step into the rooms where regulatory accounting structures are determined. Many of these frameworks date back to the last century. We must ask ourselves: Can we work with regulators to rethink depreciation models, spreading out the massive capital costs of this transition so they do not fall squarely and immediately on low- and middle-income families? Can we optimize investment incentives so that public capital is used efficiently?

Admittedly, this requires us to stretch beyond traditional engineering boundaries. But that is precisely what CIGRE is built for. With our more than 100 years track record, our unique structure of16 Study Committees and some 300 Working Groups, our CIGRE Innovation and Education fund, and our unparalleled global network, we possess the neutral, holistic platform required to bridge technics, economics, and policy.
​As we continue to drive the transition, let us ensure it is an inclusive reality where our “One Grid” initiative becomes “Everyone's Grid”. Let us challenge our Next Generation Network and our seasoned experts alike to treat cost reduction not as a commercial constraint, but as a triumph of elegant, empathetic engineering. Affordability is the missing link in the energy transition. Let us claim it, solve it, and honor our credo for the common good.

On behalf of the entire CIGRE family, I want to extend our deepest gratitude to Michael Heyeck for his six years of dedicated service, rigorous financial stewardship, and unwavering commitment as our Treasurer. He once coined our slogan "sustainable energy for all". Dear Mike, I take the liberty of adapting it to: "Sustainable and affordable energy for all". 

Konstantin O. Papailiou
President of CIGRE