The impact of large-scale renewable integration on Europe's energy corridors

Due to the long-term goals to achieve a sustainable, secure, and competitive European energy system and the consequent stringent policies for climate change mitigation, renewable energy resources (RES) will necessarily dominate Europe's future power supply. New strategies for electricity network expansion will be needed as the power supply shifts towards a high share of RES generation, in particular, with intermittent nature. Due to the interaction between electricity and gas markets, large-scale RES integration together with developments in Europe's electricity corridors is likely to influence gas consumption and imports of Europe from neighboring countries and hence affect the needs for gas infrastructure expansion. In this paper, the impact of large-scale integration of RES on EU's energy corridors including both electricity and gas infrastructures up to 2050 is assessed using economic optimization and equilibrium network models of electricity and gas markets respectively. Under four different scenarios for renewable integration, future electricity and gas infrastructure needs are determined by utilizing these models while taking into account the interactions between electricity and gas markets.