Net energy analysis reveals sectoral strategies to mitigate derailment risks of electrification.

Ugo Vaitua Legendre , Louis Delannoy, Pablo Rafael Brito-Parada

Mitigating climate change largely relies on substituting fossil fuels with low-carbon, electricity-producing energy sources. Resulting electrification alters sectoral energy demand and efficiency, and therefore also affects the amount of energy required to build energy transition infrastructure such as solar and wind farms, or grid extensions. As these transition energy requirements are significant and potentially disruptive, we develop a framework to assess how electrification will affect these requirements by disaggregating them into sectors and assigning electrification efficiencies to sectors. We apply this model to the European Union (EU-27) under a scenario phasing out fossil fuels by 2050 while maintaining 2021 energy service levels. We find that sectors employed to build transition infrastructure, such as iron reduction or heavy-duty road transport, are more difficult to electrify than the economy-wide average. Electrification therefore increases transition energy requirements relative to supply, exacerbating net energy challenges. We also find that, depending on the order in which sectors are electrified, transition-related demand for coal (linked to steel production for wind turbines) can be significant compared to its supply, and identify solutions to mitigate this criticality. Our results show that improving the electrification efficiency of sectors used in the transition significantly improves net energy prospects, hence we suggest prioritising battery electric trucks and industrial heat pumps over their less efficient hydrogen-powered alternatives. By capturing sector- and vector-specific dynamics, our analysis identifies previously undocumented net-energy challenges and actionable levers to mitigate them. These results highlight the importance of physically consistent transition models to guide the energy transition.