The IRENE-40 project will identify strategies for investors and regulators to build a more secure, ecologically sustainable and competitive European electricity system. The strategies will be presented in a roadmap, i.e. a timeline with actions and a description of development stages towards future electricity networks over the coming 40 years. It will provide investment strategies for the individual stakeholders. The roadmap will rely on a scenario selected from a set of options, identified during the project and in discussion with the stakeholder community. Its preparation will be supported by a series of robust but flexible tools dedicated to the assessment, forecast and deployment of new technologies, network development strategies and market/regulatory analyses. The roadmap and scenarios will explore options like HVDC, storage integration, synchronisation of national networks, etc. addressed in the topic Call. RTD activities will be organised in four sequential work packages dedicated to fact finding, technologies and component deployment, solutions for more sustainable, secure and competitive networks and the formulation of the roadmap. In advance of submission, the project plan, partnership and dissemination/exploitation actions have received the support of prominent members of the stakeholder community from across the breadth of Europe. The project partners are Europe’s best for the work required and will deliver the necessary outputs. The partners are from nine of the leading organisations/companies from across Europe. The Work Programme contains a robust instrument that catalyses dialogue with all parts of the European stakeholder community and drives dissemination and exploitation of the freely-available outputs. This is supported by a process to guarantee sustainability of action post-project, e.g. to allow alternative scenarios to be investigated by stakeholders. The total budget for this 4-year project is €5.52M with €3.85M contributed by the EC.