II. ACCOUNTING FOR RECENT LOAD REDUCTIONS IN EUROPE

In order to account for the impact of load reductions in 2022 and because no consolidated data or projections were available at the time of constructing the scenarios, Elia performed an analysis of the 2022 electricity consumption in all European countries. The realised demand for 2022 is then used as the starting point to build the ‘short-term’ demand trajectories for this study (2022-2025). Indeed, rather than using outdated shortterm load projections from studies not accounting for the impact of the load reductions in 2022, Elia updated the short-term load projection by considering the 2022 demand as starting point of the projection. An interpolation was then performed between the demand in 2022 and the projected demand in 2025 (based on ERAA 2022 data or most recent national studies). Through this interpolation, the load values for 2023 and 2024 are obtained.

To estimate electricity consumption for European countries without available consolidated 2022 data, the latest data from Eurostat is used (2021) combined with a three-step approach. First, the historical Eurostat data are normalised using Heating Degree Days (see the methodology Appendix B on the normalisation of the load for more information). Secondly, the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform (ETP) realised data for 2021 and 2022 are normalised. Finally, the difference between normalised 2021 and 2022 loads using ENTSO-E TP data is applied on the Eurostat data of 2021.

It is important to note that normalising electricity consumption based on Heating Degree Days requires the estimation of the thermosensitivity of electricity consumption, i.e. know- ing what is the effect of the temperature on the electricity consumption, which varies from one country to another (e.g. a country with a high share of electric heating such as France will have a higher thermosensitivity). Elia estimates the thermosensitivity of the different countries using the total load data from the ETP and the temperature data of the country between 2017 and 2022 [MET-1]. Figure II-1 illustrates how the thermosensitivity is estimated for France.

Figure 3-78 from Chapter 3, Section 3.5.2.2. shows the difference between the approach considered in this study to estimate electricity consumption in 2022 as explained here and the values of projected demand in 2025 from ERAA 2022 and latest national publications..