Over the last decade, the European Union has pursued a proactive climate policy and integrated a significant amount of renewable technologies – such as solar and wind – into the established energy system. These efforts have proved successful, and continuing along this pathway, increasing renewables and improving energy efficiency, would not require substantial policy shifts. The EU now needs a much deeper energy transformation to: decarbonise in line with the Paris agreement, seize the economic and industrial opportunities offered by this global transformation, develop an EU approach to energy competitiveness and security, as the EU has neither the United States’ shale potential nor China’s top-down investment possibilities.