Terajoule Menu
The Joule Report · Europe 2050
Europe’s energy transition is a coordination problem.
Power, hydrogen, methane and synthetic fuels form one interdependent system. Synthetic fuels sit towards the end of the chain, relying on hydrogen and electricity upstream. The difficult task is to coordinate these carriers, then disentangle their interactions well enough to understand what is driving the result.
Executive summary
No energy carrier moves alone.
The working 2050 scenario does not replace one fuel with another. It couples electricity, hydrogen, methane and synthetic fuels across industry, transport, buildings and the power system. Each decision changes conditions elsewhere: electrolysers reshape power demand; hydrogen availability constrains fuel synthesis; networks, storage and flexible demand determine whether the whole system can balance hour by hour.
This interdependence is the central modelling challenge. The same links that allow the system to decarbonise also make its behaviour difficult to dissect. The report moves from Europe to country, bidding-zone and model-node detail so readers can trace those interactions, test the assumptions behind them and see which carrier or constraint is actually driving each result.
Three ways in