European Commission's 'Electrification Action Plan' aims to make Europe the first electro-powered continent

Fri 17 July 2026 View all news

The European Commission's Electrification Action Plan aims to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to electricity in transport, industry and buildings across the EU. The Plan aims to increase electrification from today's 23% of energy use to 46% by 2040 and "make Europe the world's first electro-powered continent.

The European Commission says that by reaching this goal, the EU could save €260 billion per year in fossil fuel imports. As well as reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, the Commission says that the plan will help to modernise and decarbonise Europe's energy system, accelerate the green transition and bring benefits for European consumers who make the switch to electric cars and heat pumps.

The Commission's report notes, however, that the EU has several challenges in common with the UK whichstill need to be addressed. These include the fact that electricity often costs three times more than gas; that grid connections can take years and that too many innovative technologies never reach commercial scale.

The Commission says that the Electrification Action Plan addresses all of these challenges. It does so by proposing a series of measures that it says will help reduce the price gap between electricity and fossil energy costs and by incentivising the uptake of cleaner, electricity-based technologies such as heat pumps, electric vehicles and batteries, among others.

Measures in the plan include:

  • future-proofing electricity bills in the EU by empowering EU countries to reduce network charges for certain consumer groups and taxes for energy-intensive businesses

  • encouraging faster deployment of smart meters, which will make it easier for consumers to save on their energy bills

  • lowering upfront costs of electrification technologies across key demand sectors. This will be achieved by mobilising tools such as social leasing schemes, the Emissions Trading System (ETS) financial instrument and the Social Climate Fund.

  • speeding up the deployment of European electricity grids through the grids package 

  • accelerating the uptake of innovative electrification solutions 

  • investing in skills and jobs in electrification, with the potential of creating hundreds of thousands of quality jobs

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said: "The best way to reduce Europe’s fossil energy dependency is to power our economy with electricity from clean, homegrown sources."

Dan Jørgensen, Commissioner for Energy and Housing said: "With this plan, we are putting Europe on a course to become the world’s first electro-continent. The message we are sending today is very clear: choose electricity over fossil fuels. Choose green, home-grown, cheaper electrons over black, imported, expensive molecules. Choose independence over vulnerability. An accelerated clean energy transition coupled with electrification is the answer to Europe’s challenges in terms of security, competitiveness and decarbonisation."

The plan was welcomed by the Regulatory Assistance Project and theWe Mean Business Coalition. RAP's Europe Director Louise Sunderland said: "To me the most important thing is that the action plan steps away from the technology neutrality approach favoured by policy makers. It defines electrification as the destination, and names the key technologies, the specific barriers and introduces targeted measures."

However, the plan was criticised by some as being unrealistically ambitious. Michael Liebriech of Bloomberg New Energy Finance (quoted in Electrive) said the 46% target for electricity as a share of final energy consumption was “mathematically unachievable”.

Liebreich points to what he calls the ‘final energy fallacy’, which hinges on the efficiency difference between fossil-fuelled devices and their electric counterparts, which tend to waste far less energy. Liebreich’s analysis suggests that achieving a rate of 46% would mean that three quarters of heating systems would need to be heat-pump based (compared to around 13% now), and four in every five cars would have to be fully electric by 2040.

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