Held under the European Commission’s Sustainable Energy Days umbrella, as part of the wider European Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW), this discussion highlighted a clear reality: as Europe’s power system becomes more decentralised, electrified and renewable-based, flexibility is no longer optional. It is becoming essential to improve resilience, control costs and unlock new value from existing assets.
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Why flexibility matters now
Europe’s energy system is changing fast. Renewable generation is growing, electrification is accelerating, and power flows are becoming more distributed and less predictable. The old model, with centralised generation feeding consumers in one direction, no longer reflects reality.
Today, generation, storage, grid infrastructure and consumers interact continuously, creating a more dynamic but also more constrained system.
Flexibility is the ability to adjust electricity consumption or production compared with its normal pattern in order to achieve a specific goal. That goal may be to reduce peaks, lower costs, relieve congestion, support grid stability or respond to market signals. Put simply, it means using energy at the right time, in the right way.
A simple comparison helps explain the concept. In our article on grid congestion, we compared the power network to a motorway: when too many cars use the same road at the same time, traffic slows down or stops. Electricity works in much the same way. When too much power needs to move through the network at once, bottlenecks appear. Flexibility helps smooth those bottlenecks by shifting, reducing or activating loads when needed.
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Why resilience increasingly depends on flexibility
The Iberian blackout is a powerful reminder of what is at stake. 55 million people were affected, making it one of the largest blackouts in European history. What makes it especially significant is that it was not linked to one single cause. It resulted from a combination of factors interacting extremely quickly.
The timeline alone is telling. Renewable generation started increasing from 09:00. Two oscillations occurred around 12:00. The first distributed assets began disconnecting at 12:32. By 12:33:23, the system had collapsed into a full blackout. In practice, the shift from first disconnection to full-system failure happened in just 1 minute and 23 seconds.
The discussion also pointed to 17 underlying factors behind the voltage increase that triggered the event. The message is clear: flexibility is not the only answer, but it is one of the key levers that can help absorb instability before it becomes systemic. In a power system that is more decentralised and more volatile, resilience increasingly depends on fast, structured and intelligent responses.
Flexibility is also gaining importance from a regulatory perspective. At European level, the Clean Energy Package, the Electricity Market Design framework and the proposed network code on demand response are shaping how flexibility is structured and activated across Europe. Together, these developments reflect a broader shift: non-fossil flexibility is increasingly seen as a cornerstone of a more resilient, integrated and future-ready energy system.
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How we create value
Our role is to turn a complex energy topic into practical business action. Flexibility sits at the intersection of regulation, markets, operations, technology, user behaviour and data. That is what makes it valuable and difficult to activate without the right structure.
We help organisations identify where flexibility can create value, how it fits within their operating model, and how market and regulatory developments can be translated into concrete decisions. As we showed in our article on grid congestion, impact comes from turning complexity into clear processes, aligned systems, stronger data flows and workable operating models. The same applies here.
Flexibility is never one-size-fits-all. It depends on the assets available, the usage profile of a site and the operational priorities that must be protected. That is why it should not be approached only as a technical topic. It is also an organisational and business topic.
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What value can flexibility unlock
The potential is already tangible. One site near Brussels, for example, included 16 EV chargers, a backup generator and other flexible assets such as heat pumps. A simple peak-shaving case temporarily reducing EV charging during high-demand periods while prioritising core operations was estimated at around €2,500 per year in savings.
The same site also had a backup generator of just over 1 MW that could potentially support the grid through market-based flexibility schemes and generate around €80,000 per year in revenue, with no additional CapEx mentioned for that use case.
At a broader level, the untapped flexibility potential discussed for the commercial and industrial segment ranged between 50 and 100 GW. For SMEs and industrial players, the value identified was around €20,000 to €80,000 net per year in savings, revenues or a combination of both, depending on the case. In some EV-related cases, peak demand reductions of up to 60% were presented in the best-case scenario.
This is why flexibility is no longer only a grid issue. It is also a business lever. It can help reduce costs, generate new revenues and create room to reinvest in further transition measures such as electrification, storage or on-site renewables.
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What comes next?
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The direction is clear. As renewable energy continues to expand and the energy system becomes more distributed, flexibility will move from useful advantage to core capability. The opportunity is already there, especially for early movers that start by assessing what can be done with existing assets.
For businesses, the question is no longer whether flexibility matters. The real question is how to activate it in a way that is economically relevant, operationally realistic and aligned with a fast-moving market and regulatory environment. That is where we contribute: turning a fast-evolving topic into clear priorities, credible business cases and actionable next steps.
