Wheeling & dealing — Scenarios for understanding the European energy future

The deregulation of energy industries in combination with internationalization and a changing Europe requires strategic efforts to be undertaken in a different way than earlier. Policy activities do not control this sector to the same extent as before-corporate strategies and activities have also become important to understand. During 2002 the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences engaged more than one hundred experts from industry, government and academia to analyze energy within the project “Energy Foresight-Sweden in Europe”. One part of the project, the structure foresight panel, sketched out four different scenarios that each describes a possible European setting for the energy industries-meaning: corporate action was in the center. In this article the aim is to evaluate the result from that scenario project in hindsight and to compare it with other similar scenario projects in this field.