Spotlight on Europe: the continental blueprint and the British experiment

Meera Krishnan | October 6, 2025

Europe’s energy transition has entered a new political phase. In 2025, the European Commission launched its Clean Industrial Deal, an effort to link climate ambition with industrial competitiveness, while the United Kingdom established Great British Energy, a publicly owned company charged with accelerating domestic renewable investment. Both initiatives reflect a growing belief that the path to net zero will depend as much on political design as on technological innovation — and that governments must play a more active role in shaping it.

Brussels’ Balancing Act

The Clean Industrial Deal (CID) is Brussels’ answer to an uncomfortable question: how to maintain Europe’s economic edge while eliminating emissions. It promises to mobilize €100 billion for clean technologies, install 100 gigawatts of renewables each year until 2030, and make decarbonization a pillar of industrial strategy. The plan’s message is clear — climate policy is no longer just environmental, but economic.

Implementation, however, has been predictably tangled. Six months on, the initiative is slowed by the EU’s own administrative weight. Member states have endorsed the objectives but differ over how to meet them. The Commission’s proposed Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act, intended to streamline permitting, risks being lost in the very bureaucracy it seeks to simplify.

Meanwhile, the bloc’s delicate rules on state aid are under strain. To compete with America’s Inflation Reduction Act, Brussels has loosened subsidy constraints, allowing governments to fund domestic clean-tech manufacturing more freely. Wealthier countries, notably Germany and France, can afford to pour billions into their industries; smaller members fear being left behind. What began as a unifying industrial policy now risks widening economic divides within the single market.

Still, the underlying logic remains sound. The Commission hopes to create “lead markets” for low-carbon products — hydrogen steel, green cement, advanced batteries — and ensure Europe’s firms stay competitive as carbon pricing tightens. Success will depend not only on capital but on the continent’s ability to expand its grids, train its workforce, and maintain investor confidence amid proliferating regulations.

Britain’s Return to Statecraft

Across the Channel, the UK has opted for a blunter tool. The Great British Energy Act of 2025 created a public company tasked with building and owning renewable energy projects. Great British Energy (GBE) is designed to fill gaps left by hesitant private investors and to assert that the state can, once again, build critical infrastructure rather than merely regulate it.

Its early projects — solar installations on schools, hospitals, and military bases — are more pragmatic than grand. The company is meant to become self-financing by 2030, reinvesting profits into further clean-tech ventures and domestic supply chains. The government describes it as a catalyst for jobs and energy security; critics call it an expensive gesture in search of a strategy.

The financial arithmetic is uncertain. Analysts warn that without the full £8.3 billion initially promised, GBE will struggle to meet its mandate. The Treasury’s appetite for sustained public spending is limited, and the political horizon is short. Private utilities, wary of a state-backed competitor, are lobbying for strict boundaries around GBE’s remit. And though the current government has cast the project as a flagship of industrial renewal, future administrations could easily scale it back.

For now, though, the symbolism matters. After years of stop-start energy policy, GBE offers a coherent institutional vehicle for public investment. It signals a re-entry of the state into markets long dominated by foreign or privatized players — an implicit admission that the laissez-faire model has reached its limits in delivering the infrastructure needed for net zero.

Two Paths, One Challenge

The EU’s Clean Industrial Deal and the UK’s Great British Energy reflect two philosophies of governance. Brussels is building scaffolding — a complex, rule-based framework designed to steer private capital. London is building an actor — a state-owned entity that can intervene directly. Both approaches aim to accelerate decarbonisation while preserving competitiveness, and both risk being undermined by their own politics.

Europe must prove that its procedural machinery can translate policy into rapid deployment. Britain must demonstrate that its political enthusiasm can outlast electoral cycles and fiscal caution. The outcome of these experiments will shape not just emissions trajectories but the credibility of democratic governments to deliver industrial change at scale.

For all their contrasts, the EU and UK share one fundamental question: can politics keep pace with physics? The clean-energy transition is advancing whether parliaments are ready or not. The real competition may not be between continental coordination and British improvisation, but between both — and the accelerating realities of a warming world.

This article was published with the help of AI.