North Sea Offshore Grid - Effects of Integration Towards 2050

The purpose of the EU energy policy is to provide “secure, affordable and sustainable energy supplies”, relying on an integrated electricity market, security of supply, and clean energy. In practice this means ambitious long term renewable energy targets in EU for 2030 and 2050 and ambitions to improve the energy grid across Europe. A significant share of the renewable energy development in EU is expected to take place in the North Sea. Coping with large shares of variable renewable energy in the North Sea calls for ambitious development of transmission capacity and interconnections between North Sea countries. We analyse what kind of grid infrastructure supports the renewable generation development in most efficiently: the integrated approach, or the conventional individual solution. We find that an early development of the transmission grid in an integrated configuration offers the most cost-efficient solution leading to decreasing electricity prices in most countries except Norway.