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By 2030, the projected decrease in domestic European gas production will result in a shortfall of 12% of the EU’s gas demand. In this work, two different strategies to cover this shortfall are investigated: Increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from different global sources versus increased deliveries of Russian pipeline gas via Nord Stream 2. A novel gas system model, which captures both the market behavior of gas traders and gas system operators, is developed and applied. The model is highly detailed, as it simulates all individual components of the Europe-wide gas transmission system with hourly resolution. Simulations show that Nord Stream 2 impacts the gas transit through Poland more severely (23% loss of transit flows compared to 2014) than the transit through Ukraine (13% loss). Completely cutting off Ukraine is found to be a detrimental strategy for Russia, because only 40% of Ukrainian transit can be re-routed via Nord Stream 2 over a short timeframe. Increased imports of LNG are found to require 17% of European gas pipelines to be bidirectional, which requires significant investments into the European gas infrastructure. Additionally, the penetration of LNG is found to be highly sensitive to the price of LNG, with LNG losing 50% market share when priced 20% more expensively than pipeline gas. Hence overall, the choice between Nord Stream 2 and LNG exposes Europe to either a) the political risk of being more dependent on Russia or b) the technical and financial risks of importing the globally traded commodity LNG.

High spatial and temporal resolution optimal power flow simulations of the 2013 and 2020 interconnected grid in Central Western and Eastern Europe regions are undertaken to assess the impact of an increased penetration of renewables on thermal power plants. In contrast to prior studies, the present work models each individual transmission line and power plant within the two regions. Furthermore, for conventional plants, electricity costs are determined with respect to fuel type, nameplate capacity, operating condition and geographic location; cycling costs are modeled as function of the recent operational history. For renewable power plants, costs and available power are determined using mesoscale weather simulations and hydrology models. Countrywide validation of the simulations shows that all renewable and most conventional power production is predicted with less than 10% error. It is shown that the increased penetration of renewables in 2020 will induce a 4–23% increase in the number of starts of conventional plants. The number of load ramps significantly increases by 63–181%, which underlines the necessity for equipment manufacturers and utilities to adapt to scenarios of high penetration of renewables. The increased cycling operation of coal plants is shown to depend strongly on the power plant’s location and is mainly observed in Germany and the Czech Republic. Austrian coal plants are cycled less because they supply more base load power to southern Germany, where several nuclear power plants will be phased out by 2020. Thus there is a need for more transmission capacity along Germany’s north–south corridor to transport renewable power from the windy regions of northern Germany to the demand centers in southern Germany.