Artificial Intelligence as Infrastructure for the Triple Transition: The Energy and Environment Sector

Europe’s energy and environment (E&E) sector stands at the intersection of the continent’s most consequential policy transformations. The simultaneous reconfiguration of digital, green, and social systems — the “triple transition” — is reshaping how energy is generated, distributed, and consumed, and how natural systems are monitored, governed, and protected. Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a cross-cutting enabling infrastructure in this process, expanding capacities for observation, optimisation, and decision support across the sector. Yet its deployment in critical infrastructure contexts raises profound questions of governance, sustainability, and human centrality that existing policy frameworks address only partially.

This working paper presents a state-of-the-art analysis of AI’s role in the European E&E sector, drawing on an integrated reading of EU policy documents, agency reports, and applied research literature. It examines how the three dimensions of the triple transition — digital, green, and social — interact and generate structural tensions that technical solutions alone cannot resolve. The analysis identifies significant skills and governance gaps, maps emblematic practices, and surveys the EU policy landscape shaping AI adoption in the sector.

A central finding is that creativity — understood as the capacity to frame complex problems, design responsible alternatives, and generate public value — represents a critical but systematically underrepresented professional competence for managing the triple transition. The paper concludes with policy implications for EU institutions, higher education, and sector operators, and proposes a benchmarking framework for advanced training programmes at the intersection of AI, energy, environment, and governance.