Identifying demand-side measures that matter most for Europe's decarbonisation

Abstract

European countries pursue a miscellany of historic, emerging, and planned initiatives to transform energy demand through behavioural shifts and end-use efficiency improvements. Yet, these efforts often evolve within fragmented national frameworks that overlook the rapidly evolving supply landscape, risking misaligned investments and diminishing public engagement. We address this need for prioritization by employing a high-resolution model of the European energy system under a net-zero constraint to co-optimise demand and supply strategies across seven sectors, mapping system response to demand mechanisms that reflect real-world practices. Our findings confirm large-scale gains from demand reductions in heating and industry, and show carbon capture reliance is most sensitive to demand reduction in aviation and shipping sectors. For heating, reducing demand peak hours yields the greatest system-level benefit, while critical demand curtailment emerges as the most effective strategy for the power sector, and is also substantially helpful in alleviating high electricity prices for consumers. Smaller, and arguably more attainable, flexibility measures also prove consequential: shifting demand to coincide with solar output delivers noticeable system-wide advantages, even when the shift spans as little as two hours.