INSIGHT /
By Kristofer Fröjd | Stockholm, Sweden, Friday 30 January 2026
The EU Grids Package marks a clear shift in European energy policy: from reactive grid expansion to anticipatory, coordinated and system-wide planning.
The European Commission has been explicit: grid congestion, curtailment and slow infrastructure build-out are now among the biggest threats to Europe’s decarbonization, competitiveness and energy security. In 2022 alone, the Commission reported that congestion costs reached €5.2bn. Without structural change, they could rise to €26bn by 2030.
At Decade Energy, our business formula is designed to translate the Grids Package objectives into deployable solutions by reducing cost, accelerating timelines and strengthening resilience.
Traditionally, grid planning has been more on the reactive side: demand materializes first, congestion appears, and reinforcement follows, often years later. Anticipatory planning inverts this logic. It treats credible future demand as a planning input, not an exception.
A central pillar of the EU Grids Package is the move towards anticipatory grid planning: identifying future demand earlier and integrating it into investment decisions before bottlenecks emerge.
This is where one of Europe’s largest blind spots currently exists.
Heavy transport electrification - particularly electric trucks - is accelerating rapidly. Electric trucks alone are expected to represent around 10% of total European electricity demand in the coming years. What makes heavy-duty transport electrification systemically challenging is not only its scale, but its predictability. Unlike residential demand, depot-based charging follows logistics patterns that are highly structured, but largely invisible to grid planners today.
Charging will happen primarily at logistics depots, often located in industrial zones already facing grid constraints.
Decade Energy works directly with fleet operators to understand:
We then share these forward-looking demand signals with distribution and transmission system operators, enabling them to plan grid reinforcements earlier, more accurately and at lower cost.
This is anticipatory planning in practice and a clear example of how private-sector insight can support public infrastructure planning.
The EU Grids Package highlights congestion and curtailment as systemic failures: symptoms of supply and demand not being aligned in time or location.
Decade Energy directly addresses this challenge through distributed flexibility.
By deploying battery energy storage systems (BESS) at depots, we:
This has immediate local value for DSOs, but also national and EU-level system benefits. Every flexible asset deployed close to demand reduces redispatch costs and the need for emergency interventions.
Flexibility is not an abstract concept. It is a cost-effective alternative to overbuilding grid infrastructure, fully aligned with the Commission’s objective of reducing wasted system value.
In this context, shifting away from fossil fuel imports goes beyond the historical narrative centered around carbon reduction. It is a strategic infrastructure imperative—an effort to localize energy production and decouple European prosperity from geopolitical volatility.
Another core objective of the EU Grids Package is cross-sector coordination: planning energy infrastructure in line with transport, industrial and climate policy.
In system terms, flexibility is not primarily an operational tool - it is a planning asset. Properly located flexibility changes the capacity requirements of the grid itself.
Depot-based electrification sits precisely at this intersection.
Decade Energy integrates:
This integrated approach avoids siloed planning and ensures that infrastructure investments serve multiple policy goals simultaneously: decarbonization, competitiveness and security of supply.
The EU Grids Package also recognizes that Europe cannot rely solely on large-scale transmission expansion. Permitting complexity, cost and timelines require smarter system architecture.
Microgrids are not an alternative to the public grid. They are a way of improving capital efficiency by ensuring that every euro invested in infrastructure solves multiple constraints at once.
Decade Energy develops depot-based energy hubs that combine:
These hubs function as local microgrids, where power is produced and consumed in the same location. The system-level benefits are clear:
This directly supports the EU objective of optimizing infrastructure investment, rather than maximizing it.
The EU Grids Package also reflects a growing recognition that energy infrastructure is strategic infrastructure. In a European context shaped by geopolitical tension, climate volatility and cyber risk, resilience is no longer optional.
Distributed systems with local generation and storage:
Decade Energy’s distributed model contributes to a more resilient European energy system. Not by replacing the grid, but by making it stronger and more adaptable.
Everyone working in Europe’s energy system knows the feeling of facing a connection request arrives that cannot be met, a renewable project is curtailed while demand is growing nearby, or a grid reinforcement is clearly needed, but will take years to permit and build.
These are not failures of ambition, but of timing and coordination.
The EU Grids Package matters because it recognizes this gap. It calls for earlier planning, better alignment between supply and demand, and smarter use of flexibility. What matters now is turning that intent into everyday practice.
Which is why I’m thrilled to join forces with Decade Energy, we see where this can work and where it already does. When future demand is visible early, grids can plan instead of react. When flexibility is placed close to load, congestion eases. When power is produced and consumed in the same place, fewer problems need to be solved elsewhere.
This is not about replacing the grid or slowing electrification. It is about helping the system absorb change without breaking.
Europe’s energy transition will not be decided in policy documents alone. It will be decided in thousands of practical choices made by grid operators, planners and regulators under real constraints.
Our job is to make those choices easier, and that’s precisely how policy becomes progress.
Kristofer Fröjd is Senior Advisor at Decade Energy with more than 20 years of experience in electrification, grid infrastructure, and energy system transformation. Prior to joining Decade Energy, he held senior leadership roles at Ellevio, one of Sweden’s leading distribution system operators, where he worked on strategy, partnerships, and enabling large-scale electrification.
At Decade Energy, Kristofer focuses on grid collaboration, fleet electrification, and strengthening energy system resilience across the Nordics and Europe.
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