ASTRA is a system dynamics model for the strategic assessment of policy scenarios at the European level. Over recent years, ASTRA has been extensively used in many European research projects, sometimes in linkage with other strategic tools, to provide simulations of scenarios concerning energy scarcity, high oil prices, technological investments in the transport sector and application of measures included in European transport policy. ASTRA is built in Vensim ® and consists of nine interlinked modules. With respect to a traditional transport model, ASTRA is less detailed in geographical terms, but simulates the linkages between transport demand, the economy, the vehicle fl eet and environmental effects, thus allowing an integrated multidimensional assessment of alternative scenarios.

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The electricity supply will become more volatile in energy systems with increasing shares of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Since electricity demand varies as does the supply by RES, the remaining residual load must be covered by flexible technologies that are required to balance the different types of fluctuations. In this study, these flexibility options are divided into three categories: increasing the residual load, decreasing the residual load and shifting the electricity demand / supply temporally or spatially. Furthermore, typical technological options are discussed for each category, and four flexibility criteria are used to compare their technical and economic characteristics. These include the activation time, duration of flexibility provision, number of activations and activation costs. The study reveals that various options exist and no one technology dominates. However, within the flexibility categories, it can be shown that some appliances have advantages in three of the four categories compared to the other options. Ultimately, the choice of the most appropriate flexibility option depends on the requirements of the energy system. It can be concluded that a mix of technologies will be needed to cover the future flexible demand that may include short-term changes of the residual load as well as long-term downturns of RES generation

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European final energy consumption mainly stems from five sectors: transport, households, industry, residential, and agriculture using fossil fuels as dominant energy carriers. In order to achieve the climate targets, emissions in the demand sectors must be drastically reduced. Due to different characteristics and challenges each sector needs its own strategy how to achieve such decarbonization until 2050. In the following chapter, the impacts of an ambitious mitigation scenario on future energy demand and CO2 emissions for transport, industry, residential, and tertiary are analyzed discussing sector specific decarbonization strategies and mitigation options. Implications of such strategies for demand-side flexibility and its future need are analyzed.