NTNU Energy Transition Week 2027

Workshop: Energy Security, Resilience and Future System Design

This workshop starts from one question:

How should we design the future energy system when stress, threats, disruption, uncertainty and strategic competition are no longer exceptions, but permanent conditions?

After the opening keynotes, the workshop runs in three sessions, each building on the one before:

• From energy security to systemic resilience
• Designing a resilient future energy system
• The strategic value and cost of resilience in the revised energy trilemma

The sessions

Session 1 · 90 min

From energy security to systemic resilience

This session addresses the resilience of interrelated risks and raises a key question: are we still assessing risks one by one, even though they are increasingly interconnected and often occur at the same time? It explores how geopolitical, economic, environmental, technological, supply-chain and cyber risks spread, both individually and in combination, drawing on practical examples and short-term mitigation measures that are already in place.

Session 2 · 90 min

Designing a resilient future energy system

This session explores the design principles of a future energy system that can withstand several shocks at the same time. Using a “Now – Next – Later” framework, it examines how to prioritise resilience measures over time – since not all of them can be put in place at once – and how these priorities shape the design of the future system:

• Now: reducing immediate vulnerabilities
• Next: building a resilient low-carbon system
• Later: avoiding future dependencies and lock-in effects

Session 3 · 75 min

The strategic value and cost of resilience in the revised energy trilemma

This session explores the strategic value and cost of resilience, guided by a key question: how much resilience do different actors and regions need, and which goals are they willing to compromise on? The criteria for deciding where to invest in the future energy system may be shifting, as lowest cost alone may no longer be enough when capacity, materials and technologies also have strategic value. However, resilience comes at a cost: reserves, redundancy and diversification increase spending and may conflict with environmental goals. This final session examines these trade-offs and looks for possible solutions within a revised energy trilemma.

Timeline