‘Europe has the power to play and the will to win’, was the key message of the Eurelectric Power Summit, reflecting EU response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the vital role of electrification to build European competitiveness.  

Dan Jørgensen, EU Commissioner for Energy and Housing, was adamant: ‘No more will we let Russia weaponise energy and blackmail us.’ Three years on from the invasion of Ukraine, he claimed: ‘In many ways we succeeded. The EU got 51% of our coal from Russia, now we get zero; from 27% of our oil, we now get 3%; and from 45% of gas to 30%.’ However, the EU imported €33bn of Russian energy last year and still imports about €1.8bn per month.

Indeed, EU member states have to the end of the year to put forward plans to eliminate 100% of this dependency – banning new contracts and spot market contracts by year-end and halting long-term contracts by end-2027.

Like many of the speakers, Jørgensen expressed concern that Europeans pay more for energy than the US and China. What’s more, he recognised the Trump factor: ‘While some countries are stepping back in the fight against climate change, we have to step forward.’

Taking action 
Electrification is at the core of Europe’s energy transition to carbon-neutrality by 2050. In 2023 and 2024, fossil fuel imports cost the EU over €350bn annually, exposing industry to geopolitical volatility with loss of supply and escalating prices.

As Eurelectric’s new industrial competitiveness report points out: ‘Industrial electrification improves energy efficiency, lowers carbon cost, lowers exposure to import dependency, and increases European and industrial resilience.’ Moreover, the report claims that Europe is heating up at twice the global rate, with climate-related extreme weather events causing economic losses costing over €162bn between 2021 and 2023, according to the European Climate Risk Assessment.

Eurelectric forecasts that by 2035, 60–90% of industrial energy demand could be directly electrified with technologies readily available today or under development.  

‘There are no silver bullets, but there are many things which can make a real difference,’ Jørgensen remarked. First and foremost, he called for faster permitting and proposed that most new projects should get permits within six months – not a decade, as is often the case. More complex projects should have a permit within two years. The Energy Commissioner also called for lower taxation for energy-related projects.

‘Europe has the power to play and the will to win.’ – Eurelectric Power Summit theme

Bottlenecks 
Connie Hedegaard, former EU Commissioner for Climate Action, asked about the bottlenecks when it comes to European grid operations, decarbonisation and improving energy affordability.

CEO of E.ON and former President of Eurelectric, Leonard Birnbaum, admitted: ‘We are still struggling to add renewables to the grid, and affordability is a major issue.’

Jean-Francois van Boxmeer, Chairman of the Vodafone Group, concurred: ‘Affordability is important, and our security of supplies are less reliable than for the US or Japan.’ He also considers one of the main flaws is the lack of grid interoperability in Europe.

There was also heated discussion of the European Commission-sponsored Draghi Report on the future of European competitiveness, which apparently mentions energy about 700 times. Birnbaum sees the report as a call for ‘a real common market’ not only for goods but of services, that will drive innovation at scale. However, he doubted whether the utility sector would subscribe to the re-opening of market design discussions. ‘Capex allocation is the one thing markets always get better than politics. We need lots of capex deployment and less regulation, not more,’ he said.

Boosting industrial competitiveness 
Katherine Dixon, CEO of NGO the Regulatory Assistance Project, called for Europe to build ‘rational energy systems’ designed for non-turnkey decarbonisation, productivity and security. ‘But this is not the reality. The US combines trade leverage with real fiscal firepower, while China uses state-directed investment to transform entire sectors. Europe by contrast, has its hands tied behind its back, with fragmented politics, limited fiscal coordination and rules at both members state and Commission level that hold us back for speed or scale,’ she said.

Dixon argued that the first challenge of any industrial strategy is to make energy cheap again. She said: ‘It was no coincidence that the single market was born during a time of low prices and abundant energy. Our goal should be cheap electricity and mass electrification. There will also be a role for molecules, ideally clean ones for fertilisers, steel and aviation, rather than for heat and transport.’

Dixon highlighted several priorities for structural reform: unlocking the full value of interconnection, opening the market to flexibility, aligning contracts with system value, creating a market for long duration storage, strengthening forward markets, managing the real cost drivers, along with recommendations for grids and policy.

She emphasised the need to bring electricity prices down while also driving costs down in the long term. ‘Because once you erode price signals, you lose the tools that build a smarter system.’

She also suggested the need for deeper interconnection between renewables, like offshore wind, as a pan-European resource. ‘Much of what we are building risks under-utilisation, despite the new “70% rule” which mandates that most cross-border capacity is available for trading between European countries as part of the Clean Energy Package. However, implementation is slow and we need a credible path to enforcement.’

On the investment front, she said: ‘We need to align contracts with systems. Our investment tools are still largely ruled by [energy] output, not system contribution. That worked when the goal was to scale renewables, but doesn’t deliver the flexible response fleet we need, with well-designed contracts for difference (CfD) as a smarter way forward.’

Dixon highlighted the need to manage the real cost drivers. ‘If clean generation gets cheaper, system costs will shift from generation to grid and policy design. We need to get smarter about using the grids, with Public Service Obligations [PSOs – a charge on electricity bills mandated in some countries and approved by the European Commission], stronger locational signals and more independent governance.’

Markus Rauramo, new President of Eurelectric and CEO of Finnish utility Fortum, also stressed the need for an energy ecosystem and collaboration, reflected in the Eurelectric manifesto – with a focus on industrial competitiveness, electrification and customer focus. ‘Listening to the customers is sometimes painful, but you must collaborate.’ The second issue is security of supply, optimising use of the grid to ensure that systems are robust, stable and available. The third priority is digitalisation and AI, to handle complex grid optimisation and demand response.

Power purchase agreements (PPAs) 
‘PPAs are evolving as market, regulatory and buyer-driven pressures push towards more sophisticated structures,’ said Andres Acosta, Director of Innovation at Level Ten Energy. However, the current problem is that PPAs for carbon-free energy resources may not meet buyer demand ‘at all hours’. So, granular certificates (GCs) are being created as time-based attribute certificates (TEACs), certifying face value for 1 MWh by hour/day/month/year production unit of carbon-free energy, compared to a traditional guarantee of origin (GO) electronic document, covering unit production by month/year.

GCs are not available in Europe currently, although some countries, including Denmark, Ireland and Hungary, are pushing forward. ‘You will be able to buy those certificates to fill the gap when your PPAs are not matching demand,’ explained Acosta.

Level Ten Energy has convened a GC trading alliance for buyers and sellers of renewable energy, including AES, Constellation, Google, Microsoft and ICE, to build a transaction infrastructure to buy, sell and track time-based carbon-free GCs. ‘Buyers will be able to trade in two markets with auctions on ICE: on quarterly forward auctions, where GCs will be minted up to two years in the future; and monthly spot auctions for existing GCs.

Ginevera Guzzi, Director of Renewable Energy Liaison EMEA at Microsoft, said: ‘We have very ambitious targets. One of them is the “100 to 100 Zero Target” by 2030, aimed at getting 100% of our electricity, 100% of the time with zero-carbon emissions, 24/7. That will require a lot of innovation and PPAs, both on the buyer’s and seller’s side.’

Vincent Verbeke, CEO of Energie Belgium, emphasised the need for more flexibility to tackle climate change. ‘We are working on the next generation of PPAs for 24/7 carbon-free energy to bring our customers with us on the energy transition.’

‘There are a lot of design options when renewable projects are combined with PPAs,’ explained Ignacio Asenjo, Director General Energy for the European Commission. ‘We have committed to issue guidance by the end of the year about how to design a two-way contract for difference, for better market responsiveness. And plan to do a study of PPAs in different markets, such as nuclear projects, hydrogen and cross-border PPAs.’

Many speakers, including Verbeke of Engie, also highlighted the need for a stable regulatory framework to boost the pace of the energy transition. ‘It cannot change with each new Energy Directive. Consistency is of the essence, as we need a smart grid with flexibility if we want more PPAs, which are becoming more complex to negotiate,’ he said.

• Further reading: ‘Sharing visions of energy security for an increasingly polarised world’. While not quite a council of war, comments at the Summit of the Future of Energy Security, organised by the International Energy Agency and hosted by the UK government in London on 24–25 April 2025, set a combative tone in an age of uncertainty and conflict.
• Given the termination of the last controversial remnants of the gas transit deal between Russia and Ukraine, the eyes of EU energy czars are on the present, medium and long-term availability of global LNG. Will there be enough gas to get the EU through the rest of the winter and to store for the next one?