Designing energy infrastructure for a climate-neutral Europe - Solutions for cost-effective system development

Summary

Europe’s energy infrastructure is the backbone of the EU’s transition to climate neutrality and key to unlocking energy efficiency, system flexibility and renewable energy resources. This analysis, based on comprehensive energy system modelling across energy vectors and across Europe shows that coordinated infrastructure investments – even with conservative input assumptions – could deliver benefits of up to 561 billion euros, rising to 750 billion euros when avoided back-up generation costs are included. 

On the basis of this modelling and extensive stakeholder discussions, the paper outlines three priorities for energy infrastructure planning. The first is to embed top-down, integrated, independent and transparent modelling in planning governance. The second is to align planning with the direction of the energy transition by prioritising electricity infrastructure and developing infrastructure for molecules through a cluster approach. The third is to identify priority infrastructure corridors based on system-wide co-optimisation, to incentivise investment, strengthen regional and cross-border coordination and accelerate the build-out needed for a net-zero future.