EJ 34: CESI, 70 Years of the Future

CESI presents Energy Journal 34, a special issue marking 70 years of experience in supporting the evolution of energy systems.

This edition traces CESI’s journey from post-war Italy to today’s global energy landscape, showing how power systems have evolved into complex, interconnected infrastructures in which technology, resilience and geopolitics are inseparable.

The story begins with a fragmented national electricity system and follows the emergence of shared approaches to testing, coordination and system thinking. It then moves through the decades in which energy became strategic infrastructure, long before markets and policies took their current shape.

As the narrative unfolds, Energy Journal 34 shows how CESI grew alongside the energy system itself, expanding its laboratories, methods and international reach while preserving its independence and technical rigour. A decisive turning point came in the early 2000s, when the 2003 blackout made clear that power systems no longer stopped at national borders and that complexity had become the defining field of action.

From the energy transition to the future of grids, the Journal explores the changing shape of electricity networks: the rise of renewables, HVDC corridors, digitalisation and large-scale interconnections across Europe, the Middle East, Brazil and North America. It is also at this stage that space enters the picture, with satellite technologies becoming part of the broader story of energy and climate resilience.

The final chapters bring the story into the present. Pandemic, geopolitics and climate change redefine the meaning of resilience. From continuity of operations during lockdowns to the geopolitical shock of 2022, and from critical infrastructure monitoring to CESI Space, energy security and the transition emerge as part of the same process.

Running through the entire issue is a single idea shaped over seventy years of history: complexity cannot be eliminated, but it can be understood, measured and managed.

Energy Journal 34 is available here