AccelerateEU: SupergridEurope welcomes Commission focus on grids and electrification
The European Commission today published AccelerateEU, a Communication setting out a package of measures to address surging energy prices triggered by the ongoing US-Iran war.
At the launch today, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said: “The biggest bottleneck as I see it - potentially - in the green transition of Europe, is if we don’t have the transmission,” while announcing the Commission’s intention to set an electrification target in a few months' time.
SupergridEurope welcomes the Communication's focus on grids and electrification. Electrification is the only long-term answer to fossil fuel price shocks like the current crisis.
By shifting to indigenous renewable energy, Europe reduces its dependence on imported fossil fuels, bringing prices down in normal times, and providing real protection when global energy markets spike. The graphic above, published with the Commissions communication, illustrates this. Member States with a high share of clean, homegrown electricity consistently pay below the EU average. Those still heavily reliant on gas pay significantly more.
But electrification can’t happen without grid investment. To take full advantage of Europe's wind and solar resources, which are abundant but unevenly distributed, electricity must be able to move freely across borders, from where it is generated to where it is needed. That will require much greater grid interconnection than Europe has today. Over €1 trillion must be invested in European grids over the next 15 years. The returns are clear: for every €1.3 billion invested in electricity grids, €4 billion in annual generation costs are saved.
The Commission's grid agenda: welcome and overdue
SupergridEurope strongly supports the grid-related measures in AccelerateEU. The Commission's intention to fast-track the Energy Highways programme, and to publish an Electrification Action Plan in Q2 2026 are necessary and overdue steps toward a genuinely integrated, pan-European electricity system.
"Europe's structural exposure to fossil fuel price shocks is a grid problem as much as it is an energy mix problem," said Christian Kjaer of SupergridEurope.
"The Commission is right to put grids and electrification at the centre of its efforts to lessen the economic impact of Europe’s fossil fuel dependence. A fully interconnected European power system, routing clean, affordable electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed, is the most effective long-term fix to high energy prices available. Europe must now deliver a Grids Package that matches that ambition combined with a much-needed increase in electricity’s share of energy demand."
Innovative Grid Technologies: progress signalled, more needed
AccelerateEU could take a step in the right direction, with the Commission's planned legislative proposal on network charges and taxation, promising to “provide incentives to make an optimal and cost-effective use of the grid infrastructure”. Such incentives must include an acceleration of deployment of much more innovative grid technology, such as dynamic line rating, power flow controllers and advanced grid management systems.
These can be deployed rapidly, making them uniquely relevant in an active energy crisis and for meeting the Commission’s stated objective to make more efficient and flexible use of grids. SupergridEurope calls on the Commission to ensure the May proposal translates this ambition into binding, meaningful incentives at scale.
Read SupergridEurope's position on the EU Grids Package here.
Read the European Commission’s AccelerateEU Communication here: here.
For further information, please contact: Aoife Cronin, Communications Officer – aoifecronin@supergrideurope.eu