Planning the Energy Transition

The transition represents a fundamental shift in how energy is generated, transported, distributed, and consumed—today and over the coming decades. In this rapidly evolving environment, how can organizations transform their asset investment planning processes to confidently deploy capital, manage enterprise-wide risk, and deliver measurable strategic outcomes?

Across Europe, carbon-based generation is being displaced by renewables at scale. Offshore wind expansion, grid interconnection projects, and distributed energy resources are accelerating. Electrification of transport and heating is driving new load patterns and increasing peak demand. At the same time, utilities face grid congestion, long equipment lead times, supply chain constraints, and growing public scrutiny around affordability and resilience.

Policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal, Fit for 55, and national net-zero commitments have moved from aspiration to implementation. Regulatory regimes are increasingly performance-based, linking funding approvals to measurable outcomes in reliability, decarbonization, and customer impact. Climate risk is no longer theoretical— extreme weather events are materially affecting asset performance and capital planning assumptions.

The energy transition continues to reshape the structure, economics, and regulation of the European energy system. What began as an ambition to decarbonize has become a large-scale execution challenge. Utilities are now expected to deliver electrification, renewable integration, hydrogen readiness, and climate resilience—while maintaining reliability, affordability, and regulatory compliance.

Optimized Asset Investment Planning for the Energy Transition

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Organizations are seeing a significant increase in both the volume and variety of grid development and infrastructure projects. Investments now span traditional asset sustainment, system growth, digitalization, storage integration, and hydrogen enablement. Industry leaders are developing robust, quantitative frameworks to evaluate each investment option and understand how it contributes to short- and long-term strategic objectives.

With increased planning complexity, leading organizations are using AI-enabled multi-constraint optimization to generate capital plans that maximize value and balance competing priorities—risk mitigation, decarbonization, service performance, and financial discipline—while operating within funding, resource, and regulatory constraints. Recent years have demonstrated that static, spreadsheet-based planning processes are no longer sufficient. Utilities must increase their agility and build the capability to dynamically adapt plans in response to regulatory changes, climate impacts, and shifting system demands.

Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. The European Green Deal is our plan to make the EU’s economy sustainable. We can do this by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities and making the transition just and inclusive for all.” European Commission, The European Green Deal

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At IFS Copperleaf®, we work with leading utilities and infrastructure operators as they navigate the complexities of the energy transition. Through this experience, we see firsthand the challenges of balancing competing priorities, managing risk, and meeting evolving regulatory and system demands. We’ve found that organizations that align investment decisions with strategy, optimize portfolios within real-world constraints, and adapt plans dynamically are best positioned to deliver measurable outcomes. Based on these insights, we’ve identified four best practices to help organizations plan and execute the energy transition with confidence.

This white paper considers four best practices to help plan the energy transition.

At IFS Copperleaf, we believe a value-based approach to investment decision-making is key to establishing a common basis to leverage the opportunities and solve the challenges of the energy transition. As utilities manage increasing electrification, renewable integration, climate risk, and regulatory expectations, a structured and transparent decision-making framework is essential.

The IFS Copperleaf Value Framework creates visibility across asset risks and investment projects, enabling organizations to clearly understand where new technologies and infrastructure investments create measurable value. It provides a common economic scale by which to evaluate each new initiative and make trade-off decisions between competing technologies, growth investments, and asset sustainment priorities.

A Value Framework, unique to each organization, allows strategic objectives, risk assessments, actionable alternatives, and regulatory requirements to evolve over time—as external circumstances change, new regulatory drivers emerge, or technologies mature and improve in cost or performance.

A Value Framework allows organizations to: • �Demonstrate clear alignment between

long-term sustainability objectives and the investment decisions being made today

• �Track embodied and operational carbon impacts across the asset base

• �Integrate resilience and reliability considerations into capital planning

• �Demonstrate progress against defined sustainability and environmental objectives, whether aligned to Sustainable Development Goals, internal Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) targets, or broader measures of social and environmental value

IFS Copperleaf has extensive experience developing Value Frameworks for organizations spanning multiple industries and regions. We continue to see clients refine and expand their frameworks to address evolving regulatory requirements, increased stakeholder scrutiny, and the operational realities of a changing energy system.

As the transition accelerates, companies with a well- articulated long-term strategy, and a clear plan to address the transition to net zero, will distinguish themselves with their stakeholders—with customers, policymakers, employees, and shareholders —by inspiring confidence that they can navigate this global transformation.” Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO, 2021 Letter to CEOs

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We expect investment in energy networks will need to rise. We are designing flexible controls that can provide as much funding as needed to deliver good- value net-zero projects.” OFGEM, Networks Fit for Net Zero

1. Develop a Value Framework Fit for the Energy Transition

As the energy transition advances, capital allocation decisions are increasingly scrutinized by regulators, investors, and customers. Utilities must demonstrate not only that investments are necessary, but that they are strategically aligned and economically sound.

A well-designed Value Framework enables organizations to link strategic objectives—such as decarbonization, reliability, affordability, and resilience—directly to investment planning and prioritization decisions. It provides a consistent methodology for evaluating trade-offs and supporting regulatory submissions with transparent, quantitative evidence.

2. Improve Governance of Project Portfolios

The increased digitalization of planning processes presents opportunities for analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). Compared to manual or Excel-based processes, digital solutions provide decision-makers with increased transparency and a more comprehensive view of available options. Studies continue to show that optimization across project portfolios can unlock significantly more value than traditional prioritization approaches.

While methodologies to manage risk across existing energy networks have matured—driven in part by alignment with ISO 55001 asset management standards—the integration of growth investments and emerging technologies has often remained disconnected from core asset management processes.

With an increased volume and variety of projects, limited resources (CAPEX, OPEX, and workforce capacity) must be carefully allocated to balance the sustainment of aging infrastructure with system expansion, renewable integration, and modernization initiatives.

By combining a Value Framework with optimization and advanced analytics, leading organizations can align objectives across the enterprise and determine the most effective strategy—even within complex regulatory, financial, and operational constraints.

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4. Develop a Robust Plan for Future Scenarios

Utilities are evaluating a range of future scenarios, including increased exposure to extreme weather events, evolving regulatory frameworks, and changing demand profiles driven by electrification and distributed energy resources.

What-if analysis plays an important role in testing the robustness of the optimized investment plan under different conditions. It helps answer questions such as:

• �What if climate-related impacts accelerate asset degradation?

• �What if rising sea levels or flooding increase risk at critical sites?

• �How does the investment plan perform under different demand growth assumptions?

• �Are the projects being selected today resilient across multiple plausible futures?

This sensitivity and uncertainty analysis helps ensure that decisions made today remain appropriate, defensible, and adaptable as the energy system continues to evolve.

3. Adapt Asset Strategies to New Technologies and Trends

The energy transition requires solutions that extend beyond the capabilities of legacy grid infrastructure. Asset-level models must evolve to reflect a more diverse and dynamic asset base, including technologies such as grid-scale battery storage, advanced power electronics, hydrogen-ready infrastructure, and digitally enabled substations.

Organizations must adopt asset strategies within the context of evolving system demands— such as electrification of transport and heating, increased distributed generation, and changing consumption patterns. Replacing assets like-for-like will no longer be sufficient in many cases.

Forward-looking asset strategies should consider long-term system outcomes, resilience to climate-related stressors, and the operational implications of new technologies.

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Best Practice Copperleaf Solution Client Examples

1. �Develop a Value Framework Fit for the Energy Transition

IFS Copperleaf Value™ enables organizations to configure and operationalize a quantitative Value Framework that aligns investment decision-making with strategic objectives, including decarbonization, ESG commitments, reliability, and affordability. The Value Framework monetizes risk, benefits, KPIs, and service levels on a common economic scale, enabling transparent trade-off decisions across competing priorities. Through configurable value models, risk matrices, and value functions, stakeholders gain clear visibility into how investment decisions drive enterprise outcomes. The framework is fully auditable, easily updated as strategy evolves, and governed by administrative controls to ensure consistency and organizational alignment.

Anglian Water developed a comprehensive Value Framework incorporating environmental and social value measures across a broad portfolio. Using IFS Copperleaf Portfolio™, they reduced capital carbon by 61% compared to 2010 baselines and achieved up to 42% cost reduction at one site—while remaining on track for 2030 targets.

2. �Improve Governance of Project Portfolios

IFS Copperleaf Portfolio enables organizations to create, manage, and optimize investment portfolios that deliver maximum value while honoring financial, resource, regulatory, and timing constraints. It provides structured investment capture, configurable workflows and stage gates, AI-enabled portfolio optimization, and scenario analysis capabilities. The engine evaluates thousands of investment combinations to identify the highest-value plan aligned with enterprise targets. Governance is strengthened through auditability, transparent prioritization, and defensible decision logic directly linked to the Value Framework.

National Grid Electric US demonstrated 7–11% CAPEX efficiencies, projecting $29–46M in savings through optimized portfolio selection. TVA increased capital allocation agility and enabled cross- business investment competition, resulting in more informed enterprise- wide decisions.

Implementing Energy Transition Best Practices with IFS Copperleaf

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Best Practice Copperleaf Solution Client Examples

3. �Adapt Asset Strategies to New Technologies and Trends

IFS Copperleaf Asset™ supports long-term asset sustainment strategy development by forecasting risk, cost, and performance over time for individual assets and asset classes. It uses deterioration models, probabilistic risk assessment, and lifecycle cost analysis to calculate optimal intervention timing under multiple constraints. The solution supports asset-aware investments, enabling asset-level risk and condition data to inform portfolio decisions. Predictive analytics and Intelligent Bundling capabilities enable organizations to adapt strategies as technologies, regulatory requirements, and decarbonization pathways evolve.

Endeavour Energy saved thousands of hours analyzing risk profiles and improved budget efficiency by 5–10% across a subset of investments using IFS Copperleaf Asset.

4. �Develop a Robust Plan for Future Scenarios

The IFS Copperleaf AIP solution supports advanced scenario planning and what-if analysis across assets and portfolios. Users can model multiple scenarios with varying budgets, resource constraints, regulatory targets, climate assumptions, and ESG priorities. The AI-powered engine recalculates value dynamically as constraints change, enabling rapid comparison of trade-offs. Scenarios can be stored, compared, and visualized through dashboards and reporting tools to support executive and regulatory communication.

Duke Energy reduced capital plan development time by approximately 80%, enabling rapid scenario comparisons in seconds rather than months. Bonneville Power Administration improved plan execution accuracy by 10% through enhanced visibility and scenario agility.

Implementing Energy Transition Best Practices with IFS Copperleaf cont.

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The complexity of the energy transition cannot be managed effectively with traditional planning approaches. Spreadsheet-based processes and siloed systems lack the ability to evaluate trade-offs across competing priorities at scale.

IFS Copperleaf provides an end-to-end Asset Investment Planning (AIP) solution that enables organizations to make value-based, data-driven decisions with confidence. By combining advanced decision analytics with optimization, organizations can identify the highest-value investment plan across the enterprise, balancing risk, cost, performance, and sustainability objectives within real-world constraints.

By operationalizing the four best practices outlined in this paper, IFS Copperleaf helps organizations move from strategy to execution, enabling more transparent, defensible, and adaptable investment decisions as the energy transition accelerates.

IFS Copperleaf Decision Analytics

20% increase in value delivered from investment portfolios

Higher- Value Plans

10% improvement in execution accuracy

Improved Plan Execution

50% reduction in planning cycle time

Improved Planning Efficiency

Up to 200% more risk mitigated for the

same level of spend

Enhanced Risk Management

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About IFS

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