Executive Summary

A sustainable European energy system, mitigating global climate change and solving a number of other key environmental problems, will require massive reliance on renewable energy sources combined with a sharp increase in energy productivity. Considering that most of the technologies necessary for such a development have already been invented and tested at least on the level of prototypes, today’s most important questions are: How can renewable energies and the efficient use of energy be integrated into the European energy system at sufficiently high diffusion levels?What are the costs and benefits of such a strategy?What are the major bottlenecks and obstacles to such a development?What measures are necessary to support this development?