Session 1: Resilience in an Era of Disruption

Sabotage, cyberattacks, weaponised dependencies and extreme weather, all at the same time. Is our energy system built for that?

Energy systems now face geopolitical, technological, economic and physical risks at once, not one at a time. This session asks what resilience really means in practice: resilient against what, and at what price? We look at the technologies, infrastructure and system designs that keep energy flowing under pressure. We examine Europe’s strategic dependencies, from global supply chains to the concentration of critical-material processing. And we weigh the cost of building resilience against the cost of having too little. Above all: can today’s rush for security support long-term decarbonisation, or will it lock us into the wrong solutions?

Key question: Can decarbonisation strengthen security and resilience, or will short-term security priorities slow the transition?

Session 2: How can Europe decarbonise its industry while staying competitive?

Will Europe’s industrial emissions fall because industry transforms, or because it leaves?

Energy-intensive industry must decarbonise at today’s energy prices. It also has to compete for electricity, grids, capital and critical materials with new heavyweights such as AI and data centres. Who should get access to scarce power and grid capacity? And should the highest bidder always win, even when the value it creates ends up elsewhere? As economic power shifts from hydrocarbons to electricity, technology and critical materials, how will influence shift between petrostates, electrostates and major economies such as China, Europe, Norway and the United States? Can Europe fund industrial transformation and the AI build-out at the same time? And what can electrification, carbon capture, hydrogen and the EU Emissions Trading System do to make transformation, not closure, the outcome? This is a session about solutions, not a wish list for subsidies.

Key question: Will emissions fall through industrial transformation, or through closure and relocation, and what will that mean for the European economy?

Session 3: Power, People and the Politics of Transition

The transition is showing up on electricity bills, in local landscapes and at the ballot box.

As costs, trade-offs and competing interests become more visible, can democratic institutions keep the transition moving? Participation and legitimacy are not only about new wind farms. They are also about whether the public will keep supporting existing petroleum activities, not least in Norway, which is a major energy supplier to Europe. We explore how to move from public acceptance to real engagement and ownership. We ask how trust can survive polarisation and misinformation, and who wins and who loses as prices change. We ask whether governments can shield consumers from price shocks without blunting the incentive to electrify. And we ask how a planned phase-out of oil and gas can be squared with Europe’s energy security today.

Key question: Can democratic support be sustained as the energy transition accelerates?

Closing dialogue: Balancing Speed, Democracy and Resilience

No slides, no speeches: a frank conversation about the choices nobody can avoid.

The closing dialogue brings the day’s three strands together: resilience, industrial transformation and democratic legitimacy. It sets the insights from both expert Workshops against each other. Senior voices from policy, industry and research will debate, in a moderated conversation, the trade-offs at the heart of the week:

1. security and resilience versus cost, affordability and climate goals;
2. industrial investment versus other uses of electricity and capital, and market allocation versus political priorities;
3. national benefits versus local impacts, and the speed of the transition versus public participation.

Can the transition keep its speed, its resilience and its democratic legitimacy, all at once?

Could slowing down on some decisions now let us move faster later, or is there simply no time left?