Europe is living through its third energy price shock in four years. Each time, the trigger was different. The vulnerability is always the same: Europe runs on fuel it does not own, shipped through waters it does not control. It cannot keep burning expensive imports. The only cheap energy the region can produce at scale, on its own soil, is clean electricity: from wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear. It is time to end the fossil fuel chokehold on Europe's economy, once and for all. Europe must become the world's first electro-continent.

But Europe cannot run on homegrown clean electricity if its economy is still wired to burn fossil fuels. Around 90 percent of it can be electrified with technology that already exists. Less than a quarter runs on electricity today. And that number has barely moved in over a decade. The European Commission itself has concluded that electricity's share of final energy must reach 50 percent by 2040 for the EU to be able to evolve into an electro-continent. It is time to turn that conclusion into a commitment: one that gives regulators, investors, and member states a shared destination to build toward.

This matters more for Europe than for any other major economy. Europeans are among the most exposed people on earth to energy price shocks. In the first 30 days of the war in Iran, the EU paid an additional €14 billion in fossil fuel imports. Wind farms, solar parks, hydro dams, and nuclear plants cannot be shut off by a foreign power. Every terawatt-hour of clean domestic electricity is a terawatt-hour that no adversary can weaponise.

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But this is not only about shielding Europe from the next crisis. It is about building the foundation for the next industrial era. Innovation, intelligence, and talent flow to where electricity is cheapest, and Europe is currently paying the highest price. Industrial electricity in the EU costs roughly twice what American industry pays and about 50 percent more than Chinese industry. This is a weight on everything Europe tries to do. Every factory, every startup, every data centre starts at a disadvantage when it pays twice as much for the thing everything runs on.

Solving this will not be simple. Electrifying a continent is an enormous undertaking. It requires vast investment in grids, storage, cross-border collaboration and permit reform. It depends on minerals and supply chains that today are concentrated in too few hands. There is a real risk of replacing one dependency with another, swapping imported fossil fuels for imported batteries and solar panels. Europe must be clear-eyed about this. But there is a fundamental difference: fossil fuel dependency is permanent. You pay for the fuel every month, forever, at a price you do not control. The materials that build an electric economy are purchased once, and then the energy is yours.

We call on the EU to adopt the vision of becoming the world's first electro-continent, making the EU the Electro-Union

The financial case for leaving fossil fuels behind keeps getting stronger. The electricity-based technologies replacing them follow a manufacturing curve fossil fuels can never match. Every doubling of production drives costs down further. That curve only moves in one direction. Solar costs have dropped more than 90 percent over the past decade and will keep falling as the manufacturing curve continues. Over 90 percent of new renewable projects are cheaper than the fossil fuel alternative, and renewables have overtaken coal as the world's leading source of electricity. Solar and wind are now the cheapest and fastest forms of new energy generation on earth. And unlike fossil fuels, they keep getting cheaper with every unit built.

Every time energy has gotten dramatically cheaper, the world has transformed. New industries appeared. People lived better. Entire economies reshaped around what was suddenly possible. Coal triggered the industrial revolution. Oil reshaped the twentieth century.

Clean, abundant electricity will power what comes next. AI is the clearest signal: training a single frontier model consumes as much electricity as thousands of homes use in a year. But it is just one piece. Cheap energy will unlock transformations across manufacturing, transport, agriculture, and industries no one has invented yet.

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Imagine what the world's most innovative region could do with the cheapest energy in human history. Researchers running simulations without ceilings. Manufacturers nearshoring production because the economics finally work. Hospitals, schools, and homes powered at a fraction of today's cost.

Cheap, homegrown electricity is not one policy among many. It is the foundation on which everything else becomes possible.

We call on the EU to adopt the vision of becoming the world's first electro-continent - making the EU the Electro-Union - by setting a robust target to run over 50 percent of its economy on clean, domestic electricity by 2040.

Signed by:

Norrsken VC

Norrsken Evolve

Norrsken Foundation

Corporate Leaders Group Europe

H&M

Triodos Bank

Einride

Terralayr

Flower

Fever

trawa

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