Achieving current electricity sector targets in Central Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland) will redistribute regional benefits and burdens at the sub-national level. Limiting emerging regional inequalities would foster implementation success. This study models 100 scenarios of electricity generation, storage, and transmission for 2035 across 650 regions, quantifying regional impacts on system costs, employment, emissions, and land use. Trade-offs are highlighted among scenarios that minimize system costs, maximize regional equality, and maximize renewable electricity generation, demonstrating that these three aims have vastly different implementation pathways and cannot be simultaneously optimized.

Jan-Philipp Sasse, Evelina Trutnevyte