Podcast

[UPDATED] Wired for the future: building Europe’s next-gen electricity grid

New reflections on Europe's electricity grid system after the outage in Spain and Portugal

Publishing date
05 May 2025

*We released the original podcast on 23 April 2025. As the blackout in Iberian Peninsula happened soon after, we decided to record an update on what happened there.

In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Rebecca Christie talks to Bruegel energy experts Conall Heussaff and Georg Zachmann about the urgent need to upgrade and connect Europe's electricity grids. They discuss their recent paper outlining the challenges, opportunities, and necessary policy responses to modernise Europe's energy infrastructure.

Relevant publications:
Heussaff, C. and G. Zachmann (2025) ‘Upgrading Europe’s electricity grid is about more than just money’, Policy Brief 04/2025, Bruegel
McWilliams, B., S. Tagliapietra and G. Zachmann (2025) ‘Europe’s energy information problem’, Policy Brief 07/2025, Bruegel

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Dataset

European natural gas imports

This dataset aggregates daily data on European natural gas import flows and storage levels.

Ugnė Keliauskaitė, Ben McWilliams, Giovanni Sgaravatti and Georg Zachmann