Together with DENA (German Energy Agency), we developed a new simulation game on energy security to frame the organization´s strategy day. Drawing on DENA’s expertise in energy systems, market design, infrastructure planning, and regulatory frameworks, we refined the scenario, balanced policy trade-offs, and ensured a high level of technical realism.
Set in the near future amid economic headwinds, high energy prices, and intensifying geopolitical pressures, this simulation game places participants in the roles of senior figures from German ministries and governing parties tasked with reshaping the country’s long-term energy strategy, the “Energie-Agenda 2050.” Working from a draft key-points paper, they must negotiate within and across coalition lines to align ministerial mandates, reconcile competing priorities, and craft a coordinated cabinet submission—or face the consequences of deadlock. The exercise mirrors real executive decision-making, exposing participants to the dynamics of interministerial bargaining, coalition management, and the trade-offs that define policy formation.
Substantively, teams grapple with three strategic questions: the future energy mix (including the roles of renewables, hydrogen, coal, gas, networks, and storage), the financing of massive infrastructure and transition costs without overburdening utilities, consumers, or the federal budget, and the contours of international cooperation needed to secure resilient, affordable decarbonisation. By navigating these tensions and going toward a viable compromise, participants learn how sectoral expertise, political capital, and institutional constraints interact to produce a robust, future-oriented energy policy for a state.
Participants learn how executive policy decisions emerge through complex negotiations, which dynamics and compromises shape political action, and how ministerial sectoral perspectives and goal conflicts are taken into account.
