EIGA and fellow members of the Alliance of Energy‑Intensive Industries (AEII) have published a joint position paper urging the European Commission to ensure that the forthcoming Electrification Action Plan (EAP) directly addresses one of the core obstacles to industrial electrification: persistently high electricity costs in the EU.

The signatories wish to recommend certain measures to make the EAP fit-for-purpose for energy-intensive industries and for the electrification of the EU:

• Restoring as soon as possible competitive electricity prices and shielding energy-intensive sectors from total system costs beyond the approaches and measures adopted so far in the Electricity Markets Design Reform, the Clean Industrial Deal and the Action Plan on Affordable Energy;
• Creating the enabling conditions to invest and to roll-out new electrification technologies in industrial processes;
• Speeding up the realisation of the EU Single Market for Energy by increasing interconnectivity and maximizing cross-border trading capacity among the Member States as structural solution to distribute the benefits of the renewable energy transition;
• Incentivising flexibility, predominantly from the supply side, promoting the contribution of all renewable and low-carbon energy sources that can meaningfully contribute to climate neutrality as well as from other flexible technologies with a clear untapped potential. Enhancing flexibility and adopting a technology-neutral approach could play a significant role in reducing electricity prices in the short-term and could offer a more effective response to the energy cost disparities with non-EU countries.