The European Commission has launched a strategy to protect people in the EU from “fossil-fuel price shocks” and accelerate the expansion of “homegrown clean energy”.
The strategy notes that the latest fossil-fuel crisis, triggered by the Iran war, has already cost the EU an additional €24bn for imports of oil and gas.
Carbon Brief has identified 44 specific actions in the AccelerateEU package, ranging from an “ambitious” new electrification target through to filling up the bloc’s depleted gas storage. (See the internative table below.)
The proposals are meant to ensure the EU has enough fuel in the short term, to protect consumers from price rises and – in the longer term – to curb reliance on oil and gas.
Many EU nations are already spending billions to provide immediate relief to their citizens amid the energy crisis, which was sparked by the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February.
With its new 16-page plan, the commission has set out an initial blueprint to shift the bloc towards a more resilient future, including a proposal for tax changes that favour electricity over gas as part of a drive to incentivise clean technologies.
However, much of the plan relies on European governments taking up the proposals and changes to EU-wide taxation will depend on the full support of all member states.
Why has the commission launched AccelerateEU?
On 28 February, the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran, triggering a war and sparking an energy crisis.
Iran is a major oil producer and much of the world’s liquid natural gas (LNG) exports transit through the region.
Shipping through the critical strait of Hormuz has been paralysed and direct attacks by both sides on fossil-fuel infrastructure, including some of the world’s biggest oil and gas facilities, have paused production.
This pushed oil prices over $100 a barrel for much of March. Whilst they have now dipped below that benchmark following a ceasefire agreement, they remain elevated and uncertain – for example, a report of an attack on a ship in the strait earlier this week led them to briefly spike over $100 again.
Moreover, there is a widespread fear that markets are not accurately pricing the level of risk posed by an extended conflict. A 21 April article in the Economist was titled: “Global energy markets are on the verge of a disaster.”
To manage the impact of the surge in prices seen so far, countries around the world have announced a range of measures to protect consumers.
Carbon Brief tracked more than 200 policies from 60 nations over the first month of the war, including cutting fuel taxes, implementing driving bans and fuel rationing, and boosting domestic renewable-energy construction.
Earlier this week, the UK government announced a series of measures to “double down on clean power” in response to the unfolding energy crisis.
AccelerateEU is the European Commission’s proposal to provide “immediate relief to European households and industries, especially the most vulnerable ones, while putting Europe on a steady pathway to energy independence”.
It is a response to a request by EU heads of government at the 19 March European Council meeting to present “targeted temporary measures to address the recent spikes in the prices of imported fossil fuels arising from the crisis in the Middle East”.
The proposal includes both short-term and structural measures with longer-term effects to “further reduce dependency on volatile fossil-fuel markets”.
It highlights that “coordination is key” and proposes a range of “timely, targeted and temporary measures”. AccelerateEU prioritises the shift to homegrown clean energy, “stepping up” the electricity grid and boosting investment.
The strategy stresses that this is the second time in less than five years that such a crisis has hit Europe, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent ongoing war.
While Europe is less directly exposed to the conflict in Iran than the Ukraine war, its heavy reliance on oil and gas imports still leaves it vulnerable to surging prices.
For example, the commission notes that since the escalation of the conflict in February, the EU has spent an additional €24bn on energy imports due to higher prices.
The European Commission states that this is “a strong reminder of the need to accelerate electrification” as “the current crisis is also a call… to end exposure to fossil-fuel price shocks and import dependencies”.
In a statement, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said:
“The choices we make today will shape our ability to face the challenges of today and the crises of tomorrow. Our AccelerateEU strategy will bring both immediate and more structural relief measures to European citizens and businesses.
“We must accelerate the shift to homegrown, clean energies. This will give us energy independence and security, and mean we are better able to weather geopolitical storms.”
What actions have been proposed?
Carbon Brief has identified 44 distinct actions in the commission’s plan, ranging from affirmations of existing policies to entirely new initiatives. The commission has divided its proposed measures into five key “areas of action”, which are:
- Improving EU-wide coordination;
- Protecting consumers and industry;
- Accelerating the shift to homegrown clean energy and electrification;
- “Stepping up our energy system” through measures such as grid improvements;
- Boosting investment for the energy transition.
Some of the measures, particularly those involving coordination between member states, focus on fossil fuels. Examples include working together to fill gas storage facilities and ensuring the full use of domestic oil refineries.
However, roughly half of the actions set out by the commission focus specifically on scaling up clean energy or boosting electrification across the EU.
The table below includes all of the actions laid out in the AccelerateEU plan, including target dates and descriptions by the commission of what each one would entail.
By summer, the commission says it will set out an electrification action plan, including an “ambitious” electrification target and various measures to “remove barriers to the electrification of the industrial, transport and building sectors”.
Central to the commission’s strategy is a proposal to overhaul the EU’s taxation system so that it favours electricity over gas. It plans to introduce a legal proposal for this change in May, but passing this would require unanimous approval from all member states.
Media coverage of the commission’s proposals noted that it has “stopped short” of introducing a windfall tax on oil and gas company profits, of the kind used during the 2022 energy crisis. However, the commission says it will “assist and provide best practices” for any member states that choose to implement such taxes domestically.
Some of the AccelerateEU measures – such as updating the EU emissions trading system (EUETS) – were already underway prior to the energy crisis, but could contribute to its goal of curbing reliance on fossil fuels.
Some proposals focus on securing aviation fuel, amid warnings that Europe will soon be running low. The commission will map out existing fuel supplies and provide guidance to the aviation industry on how to deal with shortages.
Many of the proposals set out in AccelerateEU involve the commission playing a supportive role, but leaving decisions up to member states.
The commission says it will relax state-aid rules to allow member states to “implement targeted, temporary emergency measures” for sectors that are hit hardest by the energy crisis.
Countries across Europe have already taken domestic actions to protect consumers and industry from energy price rises and an annex document contains various proposals for ideas to provide “immediate relief”.
This includes targeted relief on energy bills for vulnerable households, reducing the costs of public transport and delaying the retirement of nuclear power plants. It will be up to member states which of these policy options they choose to implement.
What happens next?
The majority of the measures outlined by the European Commission are set to come into force in April or May 2026. (See the table above for dates).
On 23-24 April, the measures will be discussed by EU leaders at the informal European Council meeting in Cyprus.
Subsequently, EU energy ministers will receive a catalogue of energy-saving and efficiency measures at a meeting on 13 May. This will be based on an assessment of the most efficient measures taken since the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine war. It will set out ways nations can rapidly reduce oil and gas consumption in the short term.
AccelerateEU also includes reference to various pieces of work already being undertaken by the commission to support decarbonisation, for example, updates to the EUETS.
The commission will consult with member states on this update “soon”, before adopting a legislative proposal by 31 July. This will build on changes that have already been proposed to the market stability reserve.
The commission notes that AccelerateEU “is one part of the commission’s dynamic response” and “will evolve as the situation develops”.
Beyond what is already outlined in the proposals, the EU is looking at ways to mitigate the impact of the Iran war on agriculture, aviation and other sectors.
The European Commission will present a fertiliser action plan on 19 May, according to Reuters, to “accelerate decarbonisation and address affordability issues made more urgent by the knock-on effects of the Iran war on an already tight market”.
It is reportedly “mulling jet fuel imports from the US and new minimum reserve quotas as it eyes options amid a supply crunch due to the Iran conflict”, according to Al Jazeera.
Euractiv says the European Commission “is rejecting demands to clamp down on air travel” in response to the crisis.
The post Iran war: EU strategy sets out 44 actions to limit ‘fossil-fuel price shocks’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Iran war: EU strategy sets out 44 actions to limit ‘fossil-fuel price shocks’
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.
The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.
Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.
As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.
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Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.
In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.
African control over energy resources
An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.
“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.
A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.
Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.
In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.
Nigeria to host the AEB
The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.
After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum.
Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall.
Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls
Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”
The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The funding challenge
The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million.
The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion.
But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.
Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.
Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis
Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.
Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued.
“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.
Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.
“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels
While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives.
Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.
The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.
Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline
Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.
In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.
The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.
The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes
A booklet published by the UK’s opposition Conservative party includes a “cost of net-zero” that appears to have been doubled by a spreadsheet error.
The “common sense” policy document argues that “what people ultimately want is a government competent enough to solve the problems for which it takes responsibility”.
In a section that says “sophisticat[ed]…modelling” should not be a substitute for “political judgement”, the “Right Way” document disparages various estimates of the cost of net-zero.
The Conservative document then claims – incorrectly – that the government’s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), had put the cost of net-zero at close to £1tn. It says:
“In 2020, the CCC estimated that its route to net-zero would cost £957bn.”
In fact, the CCC’s 2020 estimate was exactly half this amount – £478bn – and last year it published a revised figure of £108bn, largely as a result of the falling cost of electric vehicles (EVs).
Spreadsheet error
The Conservative party’s erroneous claim appears to stem from another report that had accidentally added up numbers twice, using a spreadsheet published by the CCC in 2020.
The 2020 spreadsheet contains a table listing the additional investments that would be needed to build a net-zero economy, from low-carbon electricity generation through to heat pumps and EVs.
These extra capital expenditures, listed as “CAPEX”, add up to a total of £1.38tn over the 30 years of 2020-50. They are set against operational savings, listed as “OPEX”, of £0.90tn.
Added up over 2020-50, the combined CAPEX and OPEX figures come to a total of £478bn.
In addition to the annual sectoral CAPEX and OPEX figures, the CCC’s 2020 spreadsheet also has a line giving combined totals for each year. It appears that someone has added all of these numbers together, resulting in the savings and costs being counted twice.
This double-counted total for the cost of net-zero amounts to £957bn – as shown in the image below – and it appears to be the source of the claim in the Conservative booklet.
At the time of publication in 2020, the CCC said that the £478bn net cost of net-zero amounted to less than 1% of GDP over 30 years – and that the large investment needed would not only result in savings due to lower fossil-fuel imports, but that it would boost GDP overall, by around 2%.
In 2025, the CCC revised its estimates for investment costs and operating savings to £670bn and £562bn respectively, giving a net total of £108bn over 2025-50, or less than 0.2% of GDP.
Earlier this year, the committee said that cutting emissions to net-zero would cost less than a single fossil-fuel price shock and that doing so would have benefits worth £110bn per year.
Paper trail
The erroneous claim in the Conservative document is referenced to the CCC’s 2020 advice on the UK’s sixth “carbon budget”, which, as explained, does not contain the £957bn figure.
The earliest online use of the £957bn figure found by Carbon Brief is a 12 January 2026 article in the Spectator, by retired engineer and self-described “accidental energy analyst” David Turver.
A day later, Turver repeated the mistaken number in a report for the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs. His report cites figure 5.3 of the CCC’s 2020 advice.
However, as set out above, the CCC spreadsheet containing the data for figure 5.3 only adds up to £478bn, half the figure claimed by Turver.
It appears that Turver accidentally added up all of the numbers in the CCC spreadsheet, without noting that it already included a line for the annual total. This results in double-counting the cost.
(Turver’s report also triggered a slew of inaccurate headlines stating that net-zero would cost £7.6tn – or even £9tn. These figures, which came from Turver’s report, were based, among other things, on the implicit assumption that fossil fuels and the cars, boilers and power plants that use them are all free.)
After Turver’s report and article in January 2026, the erroneous £957bn figure was repeated in March by the Great British Think Tank. The organisation has the tagline “data, not vibes” and says of its work: “Every figure [is] sourced from official public bodies.”
The £957bn figure then appeared in the Conservative “Right Way” document in October 2026.
