Can Transcontinental Corridors Bridge Climate Sustainability and Energy Security?

The energy landscape is at a critical inflection point as geopolitical tensions disrupt conventional systems, particularly in Europe, heightening energy security concerns and testing climate goals. While domestic renewable capacity expansion and green hydrogen production are crucial, their effectiveness is constrained by geographical disparities and infrastructural bottlenecks. These limitations underscore the need for transcontinental energy corridors to diversify import portfolios and enable renewable deployment in supplying regions, advancing shared decarbonization goals. To address these challenges, this work presents a novel scenario-based framework to assess electrification and hydrogen corridors, capturing the temporal progression of domestic renewable infrastructure, alignment with climate mitigation pathways, spatial-sectoral implications, and advancements in clean energy cost-effectiveness. Through strategic scenario analyses, the framework evaluates the transformative potential of these corridors to enhance sector-specific resilience and sustainability outcomes in European recipients and unlock decarbonization potential in partnering regions. The findings suggest that electrification corridors from the Middle East and North Africa, alongside hydrogen corridors from allies such as the US, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, etc. can reduce Europe's gross natural gas consumption by up to 58.7%, while delivering climate benefits of 10.6 GtCO₂ through 2050 with a land-use factor of 0.26% and creating 3,340.2 million person-days of workforce engagement.