It is possible. Maybe the peering from his ISP to YouTube is shit/ overloaded. That was an issue for Deutsche Telekom for a few years because Telekom didn’t want to pay for better peering. With a VPN it is possible to get good peering to your ISP and YouTube and in return faster load speeds.

I can’t speak for other countries, but since the article is about Germany: You have never heard of Netzentwicklungsplan, Südlink, Südostlink, Lastmanagement für Ladestationen and many more of these things? The Netzausbau (expansion of the power grid) and Lastmanagement (power distribution management) is pretty much a huge topic for all Netzübertragungsbetreiber and the other smaller power grid operators in Germany. Most of the development is slow at the moment because of bureaucracy and NIMBYs but it is actively being worked on.