Europe's Energy Squeeze Hits Industry as Brussels Opens Cases Against 18 States

Eighteen EU countries were told on 28 September that they had missed the 17 July 2026 deadline to enact the right to share renewable electricity, according to pv magazine. The letters went to Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden. That is two-thirds of the bloc. The other nine, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Austria, Portugal and Slovakia, were not named. The Commission said it has not yet assessed whether their rules conform to the directive.

Sharing rules, and a two-month clock

Under Article 15a of Directive (EU) 2024/1711, households, small and medium-sized enterprises and public bodies can share self-generated or stored renewable power within the same bidding zone or a narrower area chosen by each state. The shared electricity is deducted from participants' metered consumption when suppliers calculate the energy component of their bills. Third-party organisers can be appointed to run the arrangements.

National approaches diverge. Germany's energy-sharing regime under Section 42c of the Energy Industry Act started on 1 June, but community energy groups have called the rules half-hearted. Spain and France, both among the 18, already had collective self-consumption regimes. Spain extended the maximum distance for shared self-consumption to 5 km in March, and France revised its allocation rules in June. The 18 states have two months to respond, complete transposition and notify the Commission. If that fails, Brussels can issue a reasoned opinion and eventually refer a case to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Commission also sent letters to 26 member states over the recast Hydrogen and Decarbonised Gas Directive. Only Italy met its 5 August deadline.

The enforcement push landed the same day as a batch of market data showing how unevenly the energy transition is running.

Spot prices: Sicily at €0.219, northern Sweden at €0.007

On 28 September, the most expensive average electricity spot price in Europe was Italy's Sicily at €0.219 per kWh, according to EnergyPrices.eu. Northern Sweden was cheapest at €0.007 per kWh. Austria averaged €0.205, France €0.204, Belgium €0.203 and the Netherlands €0.198. Finland and northern Sweden sat at the bottom of the table. Italy's four other price zones, the Centre-North, North, Centre-South and South, all averaged €0.203.

The gap between the top and the bottom of that list is more than thirtyfold. For energy-intensive manufacturers in Italy, Austria or France, that is a direct cost penalty against competitors in the Nordics. It feeds into the broader debate about whether Europe's industrial base can compete on power costs alone.

Heat pump sales, one of the demand-side answers Brussels is pushing, rose 11% year on year in the first half of 2026.

The European Heat Pump Association counted around 1,163,000 residential units sold across twelve countries in the first six months of this year. That is up from 1,048,000 in the same period of 2025, according to pv magazine. Those countries cover roughly 80% of the European market. EHPA attributed the growth to higher oil and gas prices amid the Strait of Hormuz crisis and to the European Commission's plans to press governments to cut electricity taxes. The Commission's Electrification Action Plan says electricity should be taxed no higher than gas and targets 4 million heat pump installations a year by 2030.

"Europe is ending its addiction to a toxic, costly drug from dodgy suppliers, gas. The sooner electricity becomes the most affordable solution, the quicker we'll get clean. The fix? Dropping taxes on electricity and shifting them over to fossil fuels," said EHPA director general Paul Kenny.

Storage economics are also being rewritten. Italy's energy regulator Arera raised the MACSE auction premium cap to €27,000 per qualified MWh per year on 24 September. That is up from the €22,000 proposed in July, pv magazine reported. The regulator blamed higher benchmark investment costs. The benchmark rose from €125,000 to €150,500 per MWh, and WACC moved from 8.0% to 8.2%. Arera also said indexing the premium to lithium prices was ruled out because the premium must be published 60 days before the auction. For a reference 75 MW, 600 MWh eight-hour battery, the cap implies €24,840 per nominal MWh per year. A pre-auction guarantee of €2,700 per qualified MWh is due in cash by 20 October.

Billions into storage, then refinanced

Large capital is still moving in the other direction. Dubai's DEWA refinanced the 950 MW Noor Energy 1 CSP and PV complex with $2.7 billion in new debt, pv magazine reported on 28 September. DEWA chief executive Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer said the deal closed "well ahead of schedule." He did not disclose lenders, tenor, pricing or a savings figure. The plant pairs 700 MW of CSP, a 600 MW parabolic trough and a 100 MW solar tower, with 250 MW of PV. Al Tayer described it as the world's largest single-site concentrated solar power project with up to 15 hours of thermal energy storage. It reached financial close in March 2019 at a cost of AED 15.78 billion ($4.3 billion).

On the research side, a team at China's Hunan University of Technology found that a linearly increasing air injection rate lifted the energy storage rate in compressed air caverns from 85.5% to 87.5%. This compares with constant-rate injection, pv magazine reported. The work, published in Case Studies in Thermal Engineering, was validated against Germany's Huntorf plant. The same study found wellbore diameter matters. Widening it from 0.5 m to 2.0 m cut heat loss through the wellbore wall from 8.5 x 10^8 J to 2.5 x 10^8 J.

Beyond the grid, energy demand is moving into orbit. Star Catcher, a Jacksonville startup, is preparing to launch a prototype on a SpaceX rocket this week. It would beam laser energy to an untethered cubesat, WIRED reported on 28 September. If it works, it would be the first time lasers have transferred energy between two untethered objects in space. Star Catcher has raised $65 million, won a $30 million US Space Force award, and holds 10 power purchase agreements and 40 letters of intent. Its ground test last year delivered more than 1 kilowatt to off-the-shelf solar panels. Google's first space data center attempt is on the same mission.

Policy risk cuts the other way too. Electrek reported on 26 September that the US Department of Transportation plans to finalise fuel economy standards on Monday. The new rules would lower the 2031 target average from 50.4 mpg to 34.5 mpg. NHTSA estimates the change would raise fuel costs by $185 billion and carbon emissions by 5%. The Department of Energy has said gas prices would rise by 76 cents per gallon if the plans took effect.

Back in Europe, the warning from ASML on 25 September is hard to ignore. Frank Heemskerk, the company's executive vice president of public affairs, said at a panel in Amsterdam that the lithography maker sold "absolutely nothing" in Europe in 2026. The region's revenue share fell from 1% in 2025 to 0%. "Because Europe is not investing and because no chip factories are being built in Europe. That is genuinely worrying," Tom's Hardware quoted him as saying. He called on EU authorities to aggregate and guarantee demand for European-made chips rather than only subsidising supply.

Put together, the picture for 28 September is of a bloc that has the rules, the targets and much of the capital. It lacks the demand, the grid or the tax structure to make energy costs a source of industrial advantage rather than a drag.