The Future of Energy Report 2021 by YES Europe

A new decade of transition starts in the European energy sector, and we – the youth - shape it by example. This report showcases views, decisions, and tangible actions of young professionals to educate junior and senior changemakers on their path of kickstarting new opportunities or transitioning established businesses.

We start by reproducing what trends the youth observes and resulting demands. The generation of renewable energy, storage, and efficiency are considered the most vital areas to meet the EU ́s energy objectives with slight faith shown into existing frameworks while expecting more decisive action. However, energy security concerns (e.g., the case of Nord Stream 2 on import dependencies) are still considered too little. This is one of the symptoms of what young professionals criticize as differently paced energy policies and actions across states, often even contradicting common union objectives.

Deep-diving through key sectors, advanced market consolidation and customer-centricity are crucial to ensure more solar sales are still fragmented, and therefore confusing, national markets. To unleash geothermal power after a stall of added capacity in recent years, operators-to-be needs to reduce high upfront costs and project risks by diversifying value streams beyond sole power generation and introducing new, more flexible project layouts – also takeaways learnings for other renewable energy sources. While opinions strongly differ on the use of nuclear energy, the majority of young professionals consider it less important to achieve carbon-zero ambitions. With blue hydrogen being sidelined, massive infrastructure build-ups for green hydrogen and streamlined strategies across Europe need to be achieved in this decade to be able to accommodate the storage of overhead renewable energy in the 2030s. More energy efficiency can be enabled, in industry, by data-driven process efficiency and, on the public municipal level, in bridging the implementation gap of already existing efficiency frameworks by employing young professionals who are motivated, committed to change, and locally experienced.

We continue by illuminating daily-life decision-making of the youth, proving that this critical mass can induce change i.a. by their preference to consider truly green electricity tariffs only and 60% willingness to accept comfort reductions for the sake of mitigating climate change.

Then proceeding to tangible action, young professionals especially raise awareness about energy efficiency actions to friends, family, and work colleagues, highlighting the key role of someone ́s immediate personal milieu as effect radius. Following the deep dive into pre-selected cases of young leaders in successful startups or projects, we identify and group key enablers and constraints of any youth initiative: e.g., early adopters & iterative problem solving for the former and greenwashing & silo thinking for the latter.