With another hot summer approaching, the EU is facing a new test of its energy transition: whether renewable electricity can translate into lower fossil fuel use, affordable heating and cooling, and homes that remain liveable in a warming climate. As Brussels prepares its Electrification Action Plan, journalist Seden Anlar explores how far electrification can go on its own.

As May rolls into June, many parts of Europe are, you guessed it, dealing with yet another spell of extreme heat. Fresh headlines about the hottest spring, hottest month or hottest day on record.

Extreme heat is no longer just a summer headline or a question of comfort. It is showing up in hospitals, infrastructure, homes and lives lost. More than 60,000 people across Europe are estimated to have died from heat-related causes in 2022. A year later, the toll still exceeded 47,000.

The other side of the calendar presents a similar picture. Cold homes and unaffordable heating are linked to excess winter deaths, respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, and households forced to choose between keeping warm and paying other essential bills, especially in uninsulated buildings.

Extreme heat and extreme cold expose the same weakness: homes and energy systems struggling to keep people safe as temperatures move further in both directions.

That is where the energy transition comes in. Climate change is making temperature extremes more frequent and more intense. These extremes increase demand for heating and cooling. And if that demand is still met through a system tied to gas, oil and coal, Europe risks reinforcing the very dependence it is trying to escape.

On paper, Europe has been moving fast, with the European Green Deal, Fit for 55 and the revised Renewable Energy Directive setting a 2030 renewables target of at least 42.5%, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine turning clean energy into an energy security priority as well as a climate one.

That push is already showing results. In 2024, renewables accounted for around 47% of the EU’s electricity mix, with wind and solar driving much of the growth. But the harder question is whether that clean energy is replacing gas, oil and coal in the places where fossil fuels are still built in: homes, buildings, transport and industry – especially when it comes to heating and cooling, which account for roughly half of the EU’s final energy demand.

Increasingly, Brussels is turning to one answer: electrification.

The big switch

If renewables are changing how the EU produces energy, electrification is supposed to change where that energy goes and how it is used.

In practice, that means replacing systems that burn fossil fuels directly with ones that run on electricity: gas boilers with heat pumps, petrol cars with electric vehicles and fossil-based industrial processes with electric alternatives. It also means expanding grids, building charging infrastructure and creating the conditions needed for electricity to replace fossil fuels across more parts of the economy.

This is the focus of the European Commission’s upcoming Electrification Action Plan, now foreseen in July. Unlike earlier parts of the Green Deal and Fit for 55, which focused heavily on targets and legal frameworks, the plan is expected to focus on delivery: grids, permitting, investment, electricity prices and consumer access.

Electrification is not automatically a climate solution. The first test is what kind of electricity is being used, how quickly it can be deployed and whether the electricity actually replaces fossil fuels. If the electricity replacing gas, oil and coal is increasingly renewable, affordable and available at scale, electrification can become one of the transition’s strongest tools.

Nuclear power shows why that distinction matters. It may produce low-carbon electricity once plants are operating, but it is not renewable, and it carries unresolved questions around cost, construction time, radioactive waste, water use and supply chains. If electrification becomes a way to expand nuclear power at the expense of faster renewable deployment, the word risks covering very different climate futures under the same label.

A second limit is whether electrification is being asked to do too much on its own. Heating and cooling show why the picture is more complicated than a single big switch. On paper, the logic can seem straightforward: use renewable electricity to replace fossil fuels in one of Europe’s largest energy-consuming sectors. Heat pumps will be central to that shift. But they are not the whole story.

For some households, moving away from fossil fuels may mean replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump. For others, it may mean being connected to a district heating network supplied by a mix of sources. Denmark’s district heating sector, for example, shows how that can work in practice, combining large-scale heat pumps with solar thermal installations, geothermal projects and recovered heat.

Industrial excess heat is part of that picture too. Energy-intensive sectors such as steel, cement, chemicals, paper, glass, refineries and food processing all produce heat that is still too often wasted. Instead of letting it disappear, some cities are exploring how it can be captured and fed into district heating networks.

The third blind spot sits on the other side of the meter. Even if Europe produces cleaner energy and finds better ways to distribute heat, the transition becomes harder if buildings continue to need too much energy in the first place.

That matters because buildings account for around 40% of the EU’s energy consumption and more than a third of its energy-related emissions. Much of that demand is made worse by the state of the building stock itself: around three quarters of EU buildings have poor energy performance, while only 1% of existing buildings is renovated every year.

Those figures are lived through walls, windows and roofs. A poorly insulated flat is not only expensive to heat in January. It can also become stifling in July. That is why renovation and insulation, shading, ventilation and passive cooling are not decorative add-ons to climate adaptation, but an important part of the energy transition picture.

Yet all these questions and contradictions point to one thing: electrification may sound technical, but the EU’s plans for it are deeply political, shaped by where electricity comes from, which technologies are prioritised, how heat is supplied, how much energy buildings need and who gets support to make the switch.

The transition’s political reckoning

The European Commission’s upcoming Electrification Action Plan is expected to arrive as Europe’s energy transition moves from target-setting to implementation – and into a more hostile political climate.

Since the 2024 European elections, the far right has gained influence, while competitiveness, affordability and regulatory burden have become the language used to challenge parts of the climate agenda. The Commission’s simplification push, including the Omnibus packages, has intensified fears that ‘cutting red tape’ is becoming a way to reopen, delay or dilute parts of the Green Deal just as implementation is supposed to begin.

That political climate also makes the coming plan harder to judge because the EU has not always matched its promise to move away from fossil fuels. Since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian pipeline gas has fallen sharply. But dependence has partly shifted rather than disappeared, with LNG imports rising and Trump’s US becoming the EU’s largest supplier – another trap of gas infrastructure, long-term contracts and pressure to slow the shift away from fossil fuels.

That is the lens through which the Electrification Action Plan should be seen: whether Europe’s next phase of energy policy can be comprehensive and backed strongly enough not just to expand electrification, but to reduce fossil fuel use, support households, renovate buildings and make homes liveable in January and July alike.

The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.