Alongside many challenges, the new Hungarian government inherits a booming clean tech industry. 🇭🇺Hungary is the largest battery producer in Europe & an increasingly important EV manufacturer. For context, annual battery & EV exports are larger than oil imports.

European gas storage has started its summer refill. Storage sits at 30% capacity today. EU rules target 80% filling by 1 November. April injections are averaging 0.2 percentage points of capacity per day. A straight-line path to the 80% target would involve 0.25% pts per day.

📜 Pleased to share a new journal article - "A new European energy policy paradigm revealed by changes in hydrogen strategies" Through text analysis we find a shift in government hydrogen policy priorities toward energy security after 2022 energy crisis. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Another energy crisis - another lack of unbiased, relevant, timely ENERGY DATA for policy-making: What is possible: The US Energy Information Administration, provides among many other series granular weekly! oil&petroleum data for: refinery production, imports, exports, prices, stocks, ... 1/4

European power prices are split since the US-Iran conflict. Gas-reliant markets like Italy and Ireland have seen high prices (€140/MWh) while renewable rich regions including Spain, Portugal and Sweden see far lower prices (€40/MWh). These are average wholesale daily prices (8am to 8pm).

Coal offers an important flexibility in the coming days and weeks - demand will grow marginally, but clean energy will be the real long-term winner of today's natural gas price shock www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

🆕 How Europe should respond to the Iran gas shock – and how it shouldn’t Short thread on piece just published 👇 w/ @bruegel.org colleagues @aroth.bsky.social @gzachmann.bsky.social @keliauskaite.bsky.social @tagliapietra.bsky.social www.bruegel.org/analysis/how...

A short thread on a few key points from our NEW analysis I’d like to highlight: www.bruegel.org/analysis/how... by @aroth.bsky.social @tagliapietra.bsky.social @keliauskaite.bsky.social @bmcwilliams.bsky.social and T.Mramor 1/12

In December 2025, the new battery EV registration share in Indonesia was 35% !! It's only one month, but potential for Indonesia to move ahead of the EU, whose record monthly BEV share is 23%. 🇨🇳 Indonesian EV market is dominated by Chinese models

Q4 2025 Update | European Clean Tech Manufacturing Investment We track 200+ ongoing investments distributed between construction start and end dates. 🔋Battery investment stable at €2 bn quartlery 🚗EV investment down as EC proposes weakening 2035 target ☀️Solar investment remains marginal

Early evidence suggests the EU's carbon border tariff is encouraging other countries to introduce carbon taxation. My @bruegel.org @camille-reverdy.bsky.social colleagues find that countries with greater trade exposure to CBAM have increased carbon pricing announcements since the EU's proposal

Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA said at Lex Fridman's podcast (0h53) that to "solve the energy problem" more people need to understand that data centers should shift load across time and space. @nworbmot.bsky.social, iegor and I share this view: www.bruegel.org/first-glance...

Quite unfortunate that Katherina Reiche deliberately misunderstands the net-zero target. The flexibility she calls for is already built into EU mitigation targets: net-zero doesn’t mean ‘zero’ emissions in 2050. According to EU scenarios, we’ll still emit ~400Mt CO2 (=gross reduction of ~90%)

Electrification is important for the climate and to reduce imports of fossil fuels. More electrification lowers exposure to global energy crises. Yet, the EU's electrification rate has stalled at 23% for almost a decade - the bloc will propose an Action plan later this year to address this.

Qatar was the one major LNG exporter geographically and politically flexible enough to sell to all major importers. While Europe bought little Qatari gas, losing that option grants the EU's current suppliers significantly more leverage over the market. www.bruegel.org/analysis/dep...

Capitalisation at BYD, CATL and Sungrow up $70 billion since US and Israel attacked Iran. Oil stuck at > $100, and TTF prices back into the 70s will give another big push to clean energy globally www.ft.com/content/b122...

Helpful piece by @martinsandbu.ft.com detailing energy crisis response lessons from 2022. In 2022, policymakers "said any subsidies should be 'timely, targeted and temporary'. They were right about that. They mostly didn’t follow through." www.ft.com/content/b94e...

🇩🇰 Denmark's clean tech trade - Vestas and Siemens Gamesa facilities see the country exporting consistent volumes of wind tech. EV imports are growing as battery vehicle share by now exceeds 80% of new vehicle registrations.

Reportedly, airline companies smell a chance to attack EU green aviation fuel requirements. This is a ridiculous request which the Commission must reject. eSAF targets were a debate of two years ago that is now done. Companies have made investments on that basis. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

🆕 📊 Updated data: Our @bruegel.org tracking suggest that the EU as of Q1 2026 has 260 GWh battery cell manufacturing capacity, equivalent to two-thirds of demand. A further 320 GWh are under construction - mostly involving Chinese companies.

In the first half of 2019, Spain’s power prices reflected the cost of fossil generation in 75% of hours - this dropped to just 19% in the same period in 2025. via @ember-energy.org ember-energy.org/app/uploads/...

🆕@bruegel.org analysis "Dependence on fossil fuels, not on the United States, is Europe’s worry” US leverage over the EU is far smaller than Russia’s in 2021, but persists indirectly via EU’s fossil-fuel dependence 1/5 www.bruegel.org/analysis/dep... @bmcwilliams.bsky.social @gzachmann.bsky.social

In some of Europe's sunniest countries 1 MWh of average solar generation is still worth more than 60 € (HR, BG, RO, HU, GR) and in IT it is worth more than 90€/MWh. (In 2026 it will likely be more.) This compares to maybe 40-50 €/MWh of average cost of utility solar www.bruegel.org/dataset/eu-r...

🆕 Dependence on fossil fuels, not on the United States, is Europe’s worry We argue that the EU's energy import dependence on the US is not comparable to the historic Russian situation. A scenario in which the US uses this trade to extract political concessions from the EU is far-fetched. 1/4

European heat pump sales are up 11% in 2025. Helping this growth to continue must be a crucial part of government response to the incoming energy crisis.

Eurostat data show how European governments cut taxes on electricity by about half in 2022 as prices spiked. They have since been steadily reintroduced. Cutting electricity taxes is again on the table in response to latest price rises & to encourage households to move away from fossil fuels.

So we are back to discussing (indirect) subsidies for imported gas - hoping the EU consumer wins. In reality everyone - except the LNG-exporters - loses:

Subsidiarity and proportionality? Both doubtful if the regulation *forces* member states to prefer European producers in tenders.

🇫🇷 The making of a French battery belt in the Hauts-de-France region Taiwanese firm ProLogium has just broken ground on a €5.2 billion solid-state battery manufacturing facility in Dunkirk Two European companies, Verkor and ACC, operate €1 bn and €850 mln facilities nearby with plans to expand

Six years of negotiations and within six weeks of implementation calls are out to dismantle CBAM, namely by removing fertilisers. Agree with my colleagues that the Commission must resist this. www.bruegel.org/first-glance...

🇮🇹 Last week, the Italian government announced their intent to reimburse the carbon cost paid by gas-fired power plants. The motivation is clear - Italy has the largest gas share in power production across Europe. The risk is that this prolongs that dependence and reduces renewables investment.

European gas demand has grown steadily throughout this winter, main reason being lower prices increasing the attractiveness of burning gas for power.

European leaders are discussing how to encourage more investments into clean technology manufacturing facilities; and the rules that should be applied when such investments come from abroad. 🇭🇺 🇪🇸 Hungary and Spain today attract by far the most investment and have much at stake

One million Europeans are employed in clean tech value chains. Including batteries, bioenergy, geothermal, hydro, heat pumps, solar and wind. Jobs are doubled compared with 2010. The data are not available, but EV and nuclear jobs would push this even higher.

🏭 ‘Made with Europe’ not ‘Made in Europe’ should guide EU industrial policy 💡 Read the First Glance by Ignacio García Bercero, @bmcwilliams.bsky.social, @niclaspoitiers.bsky.social and @tagliapietra.bsky.social 🔗 www.bruegel.org/first-glance... #EconSky

🆕 Our argument for "Made with" and not "Made in Europe" to be at the centre of a new European clean industrial policy @tagliapietra.bsky.social @niclaspoitiers.bsky.social @bruegel.org www.bruegel.org/first-glance...

🚨No 2025 heat pump rebound in France. Very similar market to 2024. 🟰 After dropping 40% in 2024, sales of air-to-water heat pumps stayed roughly flat. The 2025 rebound seen in other countries, such as Germany, did not happen in Europe's (still?) leading heat pump market.

If you wonder how US & global trade responds to Trump's tariffs ... my colleagues @zsoltdarvas.bsky.social and Marie-Sophie Lappe have the dataset for you @bruegel.org Among many figures, I find striking that advanced economy trade as % of GDP is retreating back to COVID-19 levels

Looks like German manufacturing has turned the corner. www.destatis.de/EN/Press/202...

European natural gas demand bounced back slightly in December 2025. Low prices and a drop in wind led to more gas burned for power. Slight growth in industrial demand too. www.bruegel.org/dataset/euro...

The close of 2025 brings yet another EV registration record: almost one-in-four new cars sold in the EU were fully electric in December. End of year spikes are common as policies end and support schemes phase out. It will be interesting to see January data when available.

Regarding #Tesla: This is the development of Tesla's share in the German car market since 2023.

is there a good understanding of why German and French electricity prices have decoupled substantially since early 2024? using the great @ember-energy.org prices dataset - ember-energy.org/data/europea...

Earlier this month, the EUs carbon border adjustment mechanism finally began full operations. With @rebeccawire.bsky.social and Ignacio Garcia Bercero @bruegel.org we discussed what that means. When will companies start paying? Who will be hit the hardest? www.bruegel.org/podcast/all-...

A proposal to replace the UNFCCC focus from 1.5 C target to measuring "clean energy shift" - the delta between clean energy growth and energy demand growth. Countries would set and report on hitting such targets.

🆕 EU natural gas demand bounced back slightly as TTF prices fell < €30 / MWh toward the end of 2025. This repeats the pattern of winter 23/24. After summer months of demand ≈ 20% down on pre-crisis 2019-21 AVG, winter months are ≈ 10% down

Ember @ember-energy.org release their annual electricity review today, full of great facts and figures as always. The decoupling of midday solar prices from evening natural gas prices particularly stands out to me 👇 🔋Big incoming role for batteries. ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

NEW | Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the FIRST time ever. 🌪️ and ☀️ made up a RECORD 30% of 🇪🇺 electricity, up from 20% just five years ago. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/european-electricity-review-2026/

The unfortunate consequence of tariffs and the uncertainty they create is that Transatlantic trade is slowly disappearing. For clean tech products, EU - US exports have fallen by two-thirds this year while imports from the US are down by a half. european-clean-tech-tracker.bruegel.org/s/vREcWw

Struck by this graph from @nathanielbullard.com In the last month of 2025, a total 65 GWh capacity in batteries were connected in China. That is more than the sum of batteries connected ever in the EU (around 61 GWh)