Energy transition

The European Commission’s Electrification Action Plan and a dedicated Heating & Cooling Strategy must help removing the many political and financial hurdles to renewable heating. Citizens in the EU still depend largely on fossil gas and other fossil fuels to keep their homes warm. After the massive increase of fossil gas prices in 2022, another global fossil fuel price crisis unfolds. There are clean and affordable domestic alternatives for heating, such as solar thermal energy, sustainable bioenergy and geothermal and ambient energy. Using renewable electricity for heating is the solution for cutting both emissions and households’ energy bills. The electric heat pump is the key technology, using electricity to pump up the temperature level of ambient or geothermal heat.

This Böll EU Brief critically assesses the prospects of small modular reactors (SMRs) in Europe. It finds that most SMR designs remain in early development, lack regulatory approval in the EU, and are unlikely to deliver electricity at scale before 2050. Technical, economic and political challenges – including high costs, unresolved waste management, proliferation risks and heterogeneous designs – undermine claims of rapid deployment and cost reductions. The authors conclude that prioritising renewables, storage and electrification is a more credible pathway for timely decarbonisation.

Our energy networks materialise the EU’s power of cross-border cooperation. Thanks to a well-connected grid, affordable electricity flows across the continent to households and businesses. And despite the Iberian blackout of 28 April 2025, outages remain extremely seldom and limited in time in within the EU. With the rise of a renewable, more decentralised energy system, Europe’s energy infrastructure also needs to adapt. The EU Action Plan for Grids and the EU Grids Package try to tackle the huge technical, administrative and financial bottlenecks that risk delaying the growth of wind and solar power. How can policymakers and industry advance the update of our grids? Could this task become the laboratory for a deeper integration of energy policies, evolving into a truly European Energy Infrastructure Union?

How can citizens benefit better from the EU’s energy transition? Which tools can help them to access directly renewables and building renovation? The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union and the Green European Foundation have worked with experts in energy and social policy to identify key areas where the EU could act to ensure that citizens and households are able to fully experience the benefits of the energy transition, in their homes, communities and pockets.  

In this dossier with Environmental Action Germany (Deutsche Umwelthilfe), we put forward an Action Plan for the European Commission to accelerate the transition to 100% renewables in the next EU legislative term.

The brutal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and its consequences for Ukrainian society and the future of Europe are the subject of this dossier, with contributions from Ukrainian partners and pro-green voices from Germany and Europe on current developments.

Bringing in voices from our foreign offices and partners in different European countries, this dossier consists of articles shedding light on the different perceptions and myths of nuclear energy in the respective countries, a series of video statements explaining why nuclear is not the right answer to the climate crisis and various publications.