August 22, 2025

Written by: IFS Copperleaf

Case Study: Gasunie Advances Energy Transition with AI-Powered, Risk-Informed Capital Strategy

As Europe accelerates toward decarbonisation, Gasunie is reshaping its infrastructure to meet tomorrow’s energy needs. The Dutch gas transmission leader is not just maintaining legacy natural gas assets—but building the backbone for hydrogen, carbon capture, and regional heating. To make this pivot with precision and confidence, Gasunie partnered with IFS Copperleaf® to transform its investment planning process.

The Challenge

Gasunie manages more than 12,000 km of pipelines and 1,000 gas receiving stations across the Netherlands and northern Germany. As the organization transitions into multi-energy transport—including hydrogen—Gasunie must navigate a web of risks across aging infrastructure, evolving regulations, and climate imperatives.

The company faced three critical obstacles:

  • Transforming asset and risk data into actionable insights for risk-based asset management (RBAM).
  • Manual, Excel-based planning made it difficult to compare interventions or forecast long-term needs.
  • Regulatory pressure demanded defensible, transparent capital allocation aligned to ESG goals.

To unlock smarter, future-ready investments, Gasunie needed a unified decision-making engine that could quantify risk, balance trade-offs, and dynamically optimize capital plans.

The Solution

The strength of the system lies in applying a single value framework to both risk and investment decisions. With Copperleaf, we can quantify risk in monetary terms—enabling clear comparisons and cost-justified actions. This creates a consistent, transparent basis for investment decisions across the board.

Oleg Borisov, Sr. Advisor Asset Management Product Owner
Gasunie

Gasunie selected the IFS Copperleaf AIP solution to elevate its capital strategy—moving from subjective, manual prioritisation to AI-powered, data-driven planning. Key capabilities included:

  • Granular risk modeling across 600,000+ pipeline sections, enabling targeted interventions based on geospatial, structural, and operational data.
  • Value-based trade-off analysis using the Copperleaf® Value Framework, expressing risk in economic terms to support transparent cost-benefit comparisons.
  • Integrated planning across 12 asset types, uniting CAPEX and OPEX decisions within a common optimization model.
  • Multi-constraint portfolio optimization, aligning investment timing with risk tolerance, resource availability, and strategic goals.

This marked a significant leap—from fragmented spreadsheets to a single platform that dynamically evaluates where and when to act.

Before, we treated entire pipelines as a single asset when planning investments. Now, we analyse over 600,000 individual sections—each with its own risk profile and investment needs. This granularity enables us to prioritize actions based on real, evolving risk.

Oleg Borisov, Sr. Advisor Asset Management Product Owner
Gasunie

The Impact

With IFS Copperleaf, Gasunie is turning capital planning into a strategic advantage:

  • Enterprise-wide risk visibility: Every 20-meter pipeline segment is now scored and prioritized, creating a living map of systemic risk.
  • Proactive investment timing: Long-term asset performance and safety targets can now be achieved while minimizing unnecessary spend.
  • Defensible capital plans: Investment strategies are clearly linked to regulatory and ESG goals, improving credibility and accelerating approvals.
  • Sustainable transformation: As Gasunie scales into hydrogen, its capital strategy is fully aligned to energy transition imperatives.

While data calibration continues, Gasunie has already shifted from reactive asset sustainment to a repeatable, value-based planning discipline. This positions the organisation to lead—not follow—in Europe’s energy transition.