Amidst a severe energy and cost-of-living crisis, Mapping a Public Pathway for Europe’s Energy Transition delivers a compelling critique of Europe’s failing energy system. This comprehensive study exposes how, despite public commitments to reform, the EU’s continued reliance on a liberalized, profit-driven energy market is driving up prices and jeopardizing its own climate targets. At a time when the European Commission pledges competitiveness and a green industrial future, the data presented in this study tells a very different story.

TUED Coordinator Sean Sweeney moves beyond this bleak assessment and outlines a bold vision for a publicly owned, democratically controlled energy system. Covering aspects from production to distribution and public financing, the study presents actionable steps toward reshaping the energy sector into a model that prioritizes people over profit while addressing challenges of Europe’s energy transition.

This study sets out to achieve two objectives.

The first objective isto examine the main features of Electricity Market Reform (EMR)proposed by the European Commission (hereafter, the Commission)in March 2023 and subsequently adopted by the European Council inDecember 2023.1The study discusses the impetus for reform, how and why the initialplans for fundamental reform were largely abandoned, and considersthe implications of the steady drift towards a policy framework basedon what can be termed “fortified de-risking”, which is anchored inlegally binding long-term contracts.

The second objective of this study is to present the outlines of an alternative approach to the energy transition, known as a “public pathway”. This approach will require a deep, fundamental reform of the electricitysector itself.

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Commissioned by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels Office