Last month the European Union unveiled a massive plan to electrify its economy. This is great news as such a move would cut reliance on fossil fuels, improve trade balance, slash pollution and decrease greenhouse gases emissions. The EU wants to catch up with Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea or China which are leading the world with electrification rates above 30 percent.
It is estimated that going from its current 23 percent electrification rate to 46 percent by 2040 would help the European Union’s 27 countries slash fossil gas imports by 70 percent and oil imports by 40 to 50 percent.
All in all, we are talking about cutting greenhouse gases emissions by approximately 20 to 30 percent compared to current levels (knowing that the EU has already slashed its greenhouse gases emissions by 40% since 1990).
Electrification is crucial as solar, wind and batteries are now super cheap, super efficient and are low carbon. The European Union already has low carbon electricity with 50 percent renewables and 20 percent nuclear. Fossil gas and coal as means to generate electricity are on their way out, especially now that batteries are entering the markets and curtailment could soon become a thing of the past.
But electricity so far is just a small share of the energy story. Our transportation, our homes, our industries are still massively running on oil, natural gas and coal. This is a problem as current fossil fuels uses are massively inefficient.
As we have seen previously, internal combustion engines in cars and trucks waste over 4/5 of the gas in the reservoir. Similarly, every coal or gas-fired plant waste 2/3 of its generated energy as wasted heat in the form of evaporated water. And for heat and cooling homes and buildings of all sorts, heat pumps are an incredible energy transition solution, especially if they are used for district heating. Now imagine if these were replaced by electrotech ? Electrification would thus lead to massive energy efficiency savings.
Increasing the share of electricity in final energy consumption means decreasing the share of oil, coal and fossil gas. In the age of renewable energy sources and batteries – sometimes reffered to as electrotech – leading on climate means leading on electrification. Many applications in transport, heating and industry have become both viable and competitive in the past decade.
From a trade balance point of view, electrification would save the bloc a staggering 260 billion euros (300 billion USD or 220 billion GBP) per annum by 2040. This would be a massive win for economic sovereignity as imported fossil fuels make up half of the total energy consumed in the European Union. Current fossil fuels imports amount to 2.5 trillion euros per year. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a massive missed opportunity to accelerate electrification.
Challenges posed by accelerating the electrification
But electrification will not be all rosy as it will raise tax and financial issues as currently fossil gas is on average two to three times cheaper than electricity in Europe. This is a complete nonsense as it is mostly imported and much more carbon intensive.
Additionally, as we have seen time and again, electric cars are great but they should not become the default replacement for the regular cars that overcrowd our cities and communities. Cycling has significant advantages for people and planet and as result cities are embracing
Among the criticism of this declaration : this would mean that electrification would need to go five times faster than in the past 15 years. While not impossible, this woud be hard to do unless we go all in on climate.
Additionally, this would require to massively upgrade the electric grid to allow more cheap and clean electricity to travel within countries and across borders. This part alone will cost billions in investments in the coming years. All this may explain why the declaration is not a legally binding.
I was wondering back in 2023 if the European Union could lead again on climate ? It seems that at least with this electrification plan, the 27 countries are willing to get serious again on climate, or at least, they are trying to give themselves the means to do so. So, to conclude, this may be the beginning of very exciting times for Europe. Or it may just be yet another declaration of intention. Only time will tell.
Image credits :
Header : Christian Lue on Unsplash
Mid post : Jahanzeb Ahsan on Unsplash.
