The influence of migration processes on the energy policy of the eu countries

Abstract

The European Union’s (EU) flagship packages – Fit for 55, REPowerEU and member-state National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) – aim to accelerate the shift toward renewables, yet they downplay two fast-moving demand drivers: digitalization and migration. Guided by the hypotheses that (H1) these forces have become central to governmental agenda- setting and (H2) they exert a strong, quantifiable impact on energy-policy trajectories, this study analyses annual data for France, Germany, Poland and Czechia from 2000 to 2021. Country-specific ordinaryleast- squares models link electricity or primary-energy demand to household ICT penetration, net migration flows, investment and macro-controls. Results show that a 1-percentage-point rise in ICT access increases electricity use in Poland (+0.31%) and Czechia (+0.19%) but reduces primaryenergy demand in Germany (–0.42%) and France (–0.25%). An additional 100,000 migrants consistently raises demand by 0.10–0.17% across the four countries. Scenario extensions that account for post-2022 Ukrainian refugee inflows and rapid data-centre growth indicate that current
NECP benchmarks could understate 2030 electricity demand by roughly 4–6 TWh, complicating renewable-capacity rollout schedules. Incorporating digital- and migration-related elasticities into the 2026 NECP revisions would make national RES targets and grid-investment plans more robust under heightened demographic and technological uncertainty.