Accelerating the energy transition: preparing Europe’s energy future with AI

Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging trend – digitalisation and AI are transforming how we live, work and power our societies. From optimising heating and cooling in our homes, to charging electric vehicles at the right time, to modernising the way we plan and operate our grids – digital technologies, empowered by AI, are already proving their value. They can cut emissions, reduce costs, and increase efficiency across the entire energy system. It brings promise to accelerate the energy transition and work towards our climate goals. 

However, AI adoption in the energy sector is still uneven due to strict safety requirements of critical energy infrastructure, fragmented governance and limited data-sharing. In line with the Commission’s Apply AI strategy, unlocking high-quality, interoperable energy data is therefore crucial to foster smart energy services and to develop sovereign European AI foundation models that strengthen system optimisation, flexibility and innovation. Ensuring sovereign development, deployment and control of these algorithms in Europe is key in a sector as strategic as energy.

Public and targeted consultations organised by the Commission converged on a clear call for action: to connect data owners, AI developers, and computing infrastructures under a coordinated European framework capable of driving joint development of trustworthy and high-impact AI solutions for the energy sector. 

The Commission, together with energy-specific Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs), key grid operators’ associations and AI factories, organised a workshop in Brussels. The event brought together energy and digital stakeholders to define the next steps towards establishing a common framework for AI model development and data sharing for the energy sector. 

Stakeholders voiced strong support for this initiative to explore grids-specific use cases. Central to our energy transition, grids have become more complex with the increased share of decentralised energy resources. While the energy sector has long been dealing with emerging digital technologies, dealing with this complexity requires new AI-based tools to operate the grid more efficiently.

To further support the Apply AI Strategy, the Commission will publish a Strategic Roadmap on Digitalisation and AI in the Energy Sector to tackle the challenges linked to the development and deployment of digital and AI solutions. Together with the Cloud and AI Development Act, it will also address the use of AI in the energy system. The aim of this roadmap is to reinforce European technological leadership by removing the barriers to the broader use of digital solutions in the energy sector, whilst addressing the inherent risks.