Pathways Towards 2050
The innovative aspect of this approach is that the pathways were drafted with the notion that they are interdependent on each other, sometimes in complex ways. Moreover, it was also intended to provide insight into a possible future where there is consistency among the offshore energy transition options. The pathways also provide guidance on the actions needed to arrive at this future by tackling the challenges that stand in its way.
An important note, however, is that this predicts only one future scenario for the North Sea region. In reality it is not possible to precisely predict the outcomes of the energy transition. Therefore, the North Sea Energy pathways are placed into perspective by comparing them to EU or national targets and scenarios with different outcomes.
This section describes various exploratory pathways that were established together with the North Sea Energy consortium. The purpose of doing so is to provide insight into the line of reasoning used by (internal) stakeholders to set out future trend lines for offshore renewable energy, hydrogen, CO₂ storage, and hydrocarbon extraction. An analysis for commonalities, convergence and divergence in the line of reasoning has been conducted with input from stakeholder interviews, workshop results with consortium members and public literature. The input is used to identify the window of opportunity for system integration.