In our Annual Report report, you can read all about RGI’s work in 2016 and our effort to bring together innovators who are redefining the way we think about grids and the opportunities connected to them. A few of our highlights include kicking off our work on future electricity system scenarios with high shares of renewables, successfully concluding the EU-funded INSPIRE-Grid project, establishing the ‘Good Practice of the Year’ award as a part of the Energy Infrastructure Forum, continuing our successful learning journeys to ‘Energy Regions in Transition’ and of course our European Grid Conference, at which we discussed the social dimension of grid investment.  

And, if you have missed our first best practice webinar sharing French TSO RTE's approaches to compensation and osprey protection, or simply want to refresh your memory, watch our video recording here. The webinar shares examples of how more socially and environmentally friendly grid development can practically increase the acceptability of power lines.  

We discussed offsetting the negative impacts that lines can have and either responding to that impact directly or creating new or additional value to those impacted by the line. RTE has tested both these courses of action successfully in the form of an extensive campaign to protect ospreys and a crowd funding approach that closely involved citizens in the decision of how a grid project should be compensated for.  

In the webinar, we presented both approaches and gave participants a chance to pick the brains of the people behind them. We hope that the video will help you in finding out whether these or similar approaches could also be helpful for grid development in your area.  

Watch out for best practice webinars looking at other innovative approaches in the coming months!