欧洲电力行业联盟电力耦合：通过电气化提高工业竞争力（英）

Enhancing industrial competitivenessthrough electrification JUNE2026 Electrification as a strategic lever for Europe’s sovereignty, competitiveness andclimate trajectory Technology is not thebottleneck to scaling The model exists and thetime to act is now! Breaking dependency andbuilding competitive edge Europe’s industrial base still reliesheavily on imported fossil fuels,exposing companies to price shocks,supply uncertainty and strategic risk.Electrification offers a direct path toreduce the exposure. By expandingthe use of clean, locally produced Europe’s industrial base is at astrategic inflection point. Thetechnologies to electrify are ready.The window to act competitively isnarrowing. What stands between Europe is already progressing wheresystem conditions are aligned. Theevidence in this report shows that theconstraint is not technological Industry remains a major source ofemissions, especially from processheat and heavy operations. Many ofthese uses can already shift toelectric solutions. Rapid Building on last year’s Eurelectric-Accenture report“The New IndustrialAge ”1this study moves the questionfrom 'should Europe electrify?' to 'howdoes it scale in practice?’. As energymarkets stay volatile and geopoliticalrisks disrupt supply chains, shiftingindustrial demand from imported These are not parallel tracks. Pricevisibility is the prerequisite. Without it,grid investment and capitalmobilisation follow slowly regardlessof intent. Europe must act on fourfronts – providing stable long-terminvestment signals, aligninginfrastructure with industrial timelines, For industrial leaders andpolicymakers, the immediateimperative is to align the system fastenough to capture investment. Thisreport introduces the Power Couples At the same time, electrification ismoving from cost premium tocompetitive edge. In many industrialapplications, electric solutions areapproaching cost parity while offeringgreater price stability and lower Power Couples: A new class of integrated partnerships Why this concept is different Power Couples could be a new class of multi-layer partnership that bringstogether industrial players, energy providers, technology and capitalpartners in integrated, outcome-driven models that jointly optimise system- Instead of traditional demand pooling and collocation, Power Couples jointly optimisefor system benefits across industrial demand, low-carbon supply and infrastructure. Theresult is faster deployment, lower risk concentration and better outcomes for all partners Typical commercial models Power Couples voluntarily collaborate through a combination of commercial structuressuch as long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), heat-as-a-service, energy-as-a-service, waste-heat offtake, flexibility revenues or blended public-private financing; What they deliver For the partners: Lower upfront capital exposure, faster time-to-deployment andclearer accountability for outcomes. For the system: better grid utilisation, easierrenewable integration and shared infrastructure that reduces cost. Power Couples contribute to solving the electrificationdeployment challenge by optimising coordination of fragmented Electrification cannot be understood sector to sector. It operates as a system.This methodology was designed to surface that system logic: triangulating market signals,stakeholder perspectives, synthetic data and real-world project data to isolate the recurring How we built the evidence Content 01Context and objectives 02Imagine if: Electrification Unlocked 03Reality Check: Cross-sector constraints 05Conclusion Electrification in Europe is no longer constrained by technology, but by thesystem’s ability to enable it at scale From electrification potentialto system delivery A policy window openingnow Three sectors, one systemreality Building on the turning point While the previous report establishedthat electrification is both viable andstrategic, this report takes the nextstep — examining how electrificationplays out in practice. It focuses onwhere projects succeed, where theystall and what makes the difference,highlighting how “Power Couples”can enable more coordinated,system-level delivery at scale.Specifically, it addresses threequestions: what system constraints To address these questions, thereport draws on cross-sectorevidence from three critical industrialfrontiers: energy-intensive industries,low-/mid-heat sectors and datacentres — covering more than 3,500market signals across 61 companiesand 30 documented projects.Despite the difference in processes,load profiles and operational realities,these sectors reveal a consistent The question is no longer whether toelectrify, but how to do so at speedand scale. For a large share ofindustrial processes — particularly inlow- and medium-temperature heat —technologies are mature, proven andalready deployable. Electrification istherefore not just a decarbonisationpathway, but a strategic lever forcompetitiveness — enabl