New societal trends are unfolding, such as digitalization, sharing economy and consumer awareness. They will highly influence future energy demand and, depending on their realization, enhance or counteract projected energy efficiency gains. Therefore, these trends have to be accompanied by policies with a strong focus on reducing energy demand (including Energy Efficiency First). This work analyzes quantitatively for all sectors how New Societal Trends interact with energy efficiency (policies).

An extensive consultation with European experts identified 12 new societal trends that are likely to shape future energy demand. Based on these, four energy demand scenarios were developed for 2050. Using literature review and expert consultations, the impacts on all sectors were evaluated taking these trends explicitly into account. The results show that New Societal Trends can have a crucial impact on future energy demand beyond mere techno-economic potentials. In the best case scenario, “New Trends Efficient”, they can reduce final energy demand by 67% compared to the EU “Baseline” scenario in 2050. While in the “Worst Case” scenario, they could increase final energy demand by 40%.

This paper opens up the discussion on how New Societal Trends will shape future energy demand and emphasizes the crucial role of policy-making therein.

新的社会趋势正在发展，例如数字化，共享经济和消费者意识。它们将极大地影响未来的能源需求，并根据其实现情况，提高或抵消预计的能源效率收益。因此，这些趋势必须伴随着着重于减少能源需求（包括“能源效率优先”）的政策。这项工作对所有部门进行了定量分析，新社会趋势如何与能源效率（政策）相互作用。

与欧洲专家进行的广泛协商确定了12种新的社会趋势，这些趋势可能会影响未来的能源需求。在此基础上，制定了2050年的四种能源需求情景。通过文献回顾和专家咨询，明确考虑了这些趋势，评估了对所有部门的影响。结果表明，新的社会趋势可能对未来的能源需求产生至关重要的影响，而不仅仅是技术经济潜力。在最佳情况下（“高效新趋势”），与2050年欧盟的“基准”情况相比，它们可以使最终能源需求减少67％。而在“最坏情况”情况下，它们可以使最终能源需求增加40％。 。

本文就新社会趋势将如何塑造未来能源需求展开讨论，并强调了政策制定在其中的关键作用。