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Economy
The European Commission wants to set an EU-wide electrification target by 2040 as part of a new push to cut the bloc’s dependence on imported oil and gas following the current Middle East crisis.
According to a leaked draft of the commission’s Electrification Action Plan, due to be unveiled on 17 July, Brussels will propose a binding electrification target later this year as part of a wider post-2030 energy package. 
The target itself has not yet been decided and remains blank in the draft.
“The recent crisis in the Middle East showed for the second time in five years the risks of the EU’s dependency on imported fossil fuels,” the draft says, referring to the additional €50bn the EU spent on fossil-fuel imports during the 111-day crisis. 
Instead, Brussels wants to speed up electrification in transport, buildings and industry, describing it as a matter of “sovereignty”, competitiveness and energy security.
The commission estimates that faster electrification could replace around two-thirds of EU gas demand and halve oil consumption by 2040, cutting the bloc’s fossil fuel import bill by some €200bn over the period.
Electricity currently accounts for only 23 percent of the EU’s final energy consumption, a figure that has barely changed over the past decade despite rapid growth in renewable power. 
By comparison, the electrification rate has already exceeded 30 percent in China, Japan and South Korea, according to the draft. Looking at it for a longer period of time, and Europe’s electrification looks even less impressive, with the overall rate barely changing since the early 1990s.  
The document identifies high power prices as one of the biggest barriers to electrification. 
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Wester van Gaal is our economics editor. He joined EUobserver in September 2021. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Motherboard, Vice Media’s technology and science website, and worked as a climate economy journalist for The Correspondent. He is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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