The European Green Deal is setting clear objectives for the transformation of the
economy into a cleaner and at the same time competitive working model. The energy
sector and especially the electricity sector faces serious challenges in order to
comply with the objectives set by the policy. Aging power plants and grid infrastructure,
phasing out fossil based energy production, the nuclear phase-out in some countries,
increasing weather dependent intermittent power sources, the requirements of the security
of electricity supply are also individually stressing issues, but all together are
even more challenging.
In line with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) the energy
strategy is the competence of the individual countries, based on the fact that the
different countries have very different geological, socio-economical and ecological
conditions, and their access to natural resources can be diverse. Therefore the national
governments and national Parliaments are setting the national strategies which has
to be in-line with the European framework. An important question arises evidently,
namely, whether the national pieces of the big European Puzzle will result to a picture
that has been set by the European Green Deal published on 14th July 2021?
In the research presented in this paper, we tried to answer the abovementioned questions
by investigating the energy strategy of 19 countries situated in continental Europe.
We ran simulations for the year 2030 and 2040 using full year models with hourly resolution
to investigate if the power plant portfolios of the individual countries could cover
the electricity needs foreseen by their national energy strategies. Possible curtailment
and unserved demand of the 19 countries in question were summed and final conclusions
were drawn based on the simulation results.
