Unveiling the Electricity Highways Project Results: "Europe's Future Secure & Sustainable Electricity Infrastructure"

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The European Commission and the e-Highway2050 consortium are pleased to invite policy makers, regulators, system operators, manufacturers, planning and academic experts to the presentation and discussion of the final results of the e-Highway2050 project. Electricity highways are defined as one of the 12 energy infrastructure priority corridors and areas in the Regulation on "Guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructures" (TEN-E regulation).

Europeans legitimately aspire to a sustainable, reliable and cost-efficient electricity supply. European leaders have set themselves ambitious climate and energy goals for 2050. These objectives were recently highlighted in the European Commission Communication on the Energy Union:

  • A well-functioning energy market,
  • Security of supply,
  • Energy efficiency, energy saving, and development of renewables,
  • Greater interconnection of energy networks.

To meet these objectives, the European Commission, following its proposal in the November 2010 Communication "Energy infrastructure priorities for 2020 and beyond – a blueprint for an integrated European energy network" to immediately launch work to establish a modular development plan, launched in 2012 the e-Highway2050 research project with the aim of producing a module for the expansion of the European electricity grid up to 2050.

This modular plan will help the integration of the European electricity markets. It is also designed to enable the pan-European grid to host large quantities of electricity from renewable energy sources and transport it over long distances.

To build their network planning module, members of the project have sought to identify what the future of Europe’s electricity grid might look like in 2050. Based on this they could identify what Europe would need in terms of electricity highways. To build their scenarios of the future they took into consideration possible evolutions in terms of renewables, technology, socio-economic conditions, environmental conditions and governance of networks.

After 40 months of intense work, the project will be delivering its results end of 2015. The 3-4 November conference will present the main findings of the project and offer a forum to discuss future implementation.