Greater transport electrification could cut Europe’s import dependency by nearly a quarter by 2040

Europe is about to decide what its renewable energy framework should look like for the decade after 2030. For transport, the political question is simple: Does Europe want to keep depending on imported oil and fossil fuels or does it want its transport system to rely more on European electricity?

For too long, the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive has treated transport decarbonisation as a question of fuel substitution. In other words, how much petrol and diesel can be replaced by alternative fuels such as biofuels or e-fuels? But the cleanest and simplest fuel is not a fuel at all. It is electricity.

Electrification does something no liquid fuel can do. It cuts the volume of energy needed in transport in the first place, due to its energy efficiency gains. This is why prioritising direct electrification is both a climate and an energy security policy measure.

In a world where energy security has returned to the top of the political agenda, reducing energy demand and prioritising Europe's energy autonomy should be at the heart of political negotiations. Avoiding imported barrels of oil, cutting fossil and unsustainable fuel imports and prioritising domestic electricity production should be a central objective.

In our latest study, we show that the next renewable energy transport target will depend heavily on whether the EU defends the policies that drive road electrification, especially the car CO₂ standards. The model looks at different legislative electrification pathways in the EU. The results are clear. Weakening car CO₂ standards would allow a similar headline RES target to be reached, but only through much greater reliance on scarce and imported alternative fuels.

Electricity can do the heavy lifting in the RES-T target while scarce, sustainably sourced fuels are reserved for sectors that need them most, such as aviation and shipping. A high-electrification pathway would also bring EU transport’s 2040 import dependency down by nearly a quarter from today’s level, around 15% lower than under low-electrification pathways. By contrast, a weaker electrification pathway for cars would do the opposite.

For policymakers, the lesson is straightforward: the 2040 renewable energy transport target must be paired with ambitious electrification measures and a correspondingly higher contribution from renewable electricity.

Otherwise Europe will be relying on volatile imports for longer.