European Commission 2025 energy system reference scenario to be licensed CC-BY-4.0

The European Commission DG ENER (Directorate‑General Energy) is currently updating their 2025 aggregate reference scenario used to inform official energy and climate policy development.

This exercise covers energy, buildings, industry, transport, land‑use, and CO2 and non‑CO2 emissions.

The part of the aggregate reference scenario of most interest to energy system modelers is the multi‑sheet E3M_technoecon_Energy.xlsx spreadsheet file that informs the closed‑source PRIMES framework developed by E3 Modelling in Athens.

Today 22 October 2024 the DG ENER held a Workshop on Technology Assumptions with about 40 participants in attendance. Many were representing trade associations, with university researchers, NGOs, and others present too.

The assumptions and parameters adopted during the current consultation will be published in an updated version of the same spreadsheet and also accompanied by documentation.

I asked about the legal context by chat and video at the meeting:

When would it be appropriate to cover the non‑openness of this data being used by the EC for public policy?

The PRIMES spreadsheets are notated “(c) E3-Modelling - Confidential - Not to be used or further disturbed without permission”

Material from the IEA under CC‑BY‑4.0 is apparently included - but no attribution that I could see.

Can the DG ENER commission a legal opinion on the legal context of these spreadsheets, in terms of both license compliance and reusability [by] other modelers?

The response was that the final datasets will be published online under a Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license. And the accompanying report, I imagine, will also be under the same terms.

I stressed that without CC‑BY‑4.0 licensing, the data will not be useful to this particular community.

And in relation to openness generally, I have been reliably told that in the past even economics ministries in member states could not obtain detailed model results for their regions. Hopefully those days are receding.

Here is my chat question as a screenshot:

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For completeness, my written submission as a PDF file, submitted 3 weeks earlier:

This submission was provided in a personal capacity.

@robbie.morrison this has come up in the context of a new announcement today by the European Commission, about tripling DC capacity in the next 7 years. You can read some more below

To stimulate private sector investment in cloud capacity and data centres, the Commission will also propose a Cloud and AI Development Act. The goal is to at least triple the EU’s data centre capacity in the next five to seven years, prioritising highly sustainable data centres.

Source: Press corner | European Commission.

I’m particular interested in this bit here:

The part of the aggregate reference scenario of most interest to energy system modelers is the multi‑sheet E3M_technoecon_Energy.xlsx spreadsheet file that informs the closed‑source PRIMES framework developed by E3 Modelling in Athens.

Today 22 October 2024 the DG ENER held a Workshop on Technology Assumptions with about 40 participants in attendance. Many were representing trade associations, with university researchers, NGOs, and others present too.

The assumptions and parameters adopted during the current consultation will be published in an updated version of the same spreadsheet and also accompanied by documentation.

Source: European Commission 2025 energy system reference scenario to be licensed CC-BY-4.0 - Open data - Open Energy Modelling Initiative by

I can’t see how this triple DC capacity is acheivable, and I’m trying to understand what kind quantative basis there is for it.

I’d like to respond to consultation that opened today, but it’s much easier to have a data informed discussion if you have access to data like the spreadsheet above.

This is particularly the cases given that there would likely be some form of financial support made available to help firms hit this target.

Let’s shift this line of questioning about data centers (DC) and electricity demand growth to a new topic and leave this thread to deal with the question of dataset licensing.

On that latter point, I wrote to the European Commission on 10 April 2025 to ask if the dataset has been published and if a Creative Commons license has indeed been added. I will report back if and when I get a response. If anyone else knows anything, please feel free to contribute.