ABSTRACT
This session highlighted that the energy transition is shifting from a technological challenge to an investment coordination challenge. The panel discussed how to accelerate renewable deployment, reinforce transmission networks, and mobilize capital through credible green instruments, while maintaining the financial discipline demanded by investors
The discussion focused on five dimensions:
- Policies & Regulation — creating stability and predictability to drive investment while correcting fossil-market distortions.
- Financials — leveraging sustainable finance instruments and ensuring that impact, not volume, drives capital allocation.
- Technology — focusing on scalable low-carbon solutions today while maintaining selective readiness for breakthrough technologies.
- Hard-to-Abate Sectors — promoting electrification, green hydrogen, and CCUS within realistic timelines.
- Future Outlook — learning from examples like China and its holistic approach and recognizing that societal and behavioural change are as essential as innovation.
Throughout the discussion, participants underlined that decarbonization is not merely a technical challenge but a socio-economic opportunity, demanding coordination between regulators, investors, industries, and citizens. The meeting concluded that the next decade will be defined by the alignment of risk, regulation, finance, and human behavior, all converging around the electricity-based economy.
Keywords: decarbonization; electrification; green finance; EU Green Bond Standard; climate risk; polluter pays; fossil subsidies; grids; hydrogen; CCUS; long-duration storage; behavioral change; economic growth; adaptation; sustainable competitiveness.
KEY FINDINGS:
- Transition towards a low-carbon economy has entered a new phase, one where electrification and decarbonization are not just environmental imperatives but economic needs and opportunities. “The era of electricity is here”, marking a shift from the energy transition as a theoretical ambition to a tangible, systemic transformation.
- The polluter-pays principle remains under-implemented. Fossil subsidies and uneven taxation distort markets. Without policy correction, low-carbon investments will continue to compete on unequal terms, slowing down the transformation.
- Full decarbonization is achievable without economic slowdown if growth ensures the appropriate innovation, electrification, and efficiency. This transition must be inclusive and socially fair.
- Green bonds and ESG-linked loans are essential instruments for channeling capital, though insufficient on their own to mobilize investment at the required scale.
- Electrical transmission and distribution networks represent the physical foundation of the energy transition, requiring the right investment to ensure flexibility and resilience. Such investments are technically doable if regulatory frameworks, financing mechanisms, and permitting systems are aligned.
- The potential of hydrogen, CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) and long-duration storage has to be leveraged. There is a need to avoid “spreading resources too thin” while maintaining readiness for breakthrough innovations that could reshape energy systems by 2040–2050.
- Electrification of China’s economy demonstrates what long-term planning, policy coherence, and industrial strategy can achieve.
- Technology alone is insufficient. Behavioral and societal change, from consumer habits to policy frameworks, remains the missing variable in achieving the scale and speed required for the global transition.
Content
Policies and Regulation
Policy consistency is a must. A well-designed regulation is a key driver for technological change. Regulatory frameworks have to guarantee stability and predictability, essential for de-risking capital-intensive investments in networks and renewables.
There are still ongoing distortions: fossil subsidies and uneven energy taxation undermine clean energy competitiveness. The principle that “polluters pay should be universal” is a necessary correction to avoid market biases. Eliminating fossil subsidies is both an environmental and a fiscal imperative.
There is a need for coordination among industrialized economies to avoid carbon leakage and ensure global fairness. Without cross-border alignment, decarbonization efforts risk being neutralized by emissions shifting elsewhere.
Delay moving forward increases the risk of stranded assets, missed innovation cycles, and loss of competitiveness.
Financials
Green finance has to be a transformative enabler. The first corporate issuance under the EU Green Bond Standard (EU GBS) is a milestone that enhances transparency and investor confidence.
But financial instruments alone cannot mobilize private capital at the required scale. They are necessary but not sufficient, noting that regulatory certainty, project pipelines, and robust taxonomies are the decisive levers.
At the same time there is a need to link finance to social equity, observing that a just transition depends on accessible funding for regions and sectors facing structural decline. Public policy should ensure that green capital supports inclusive growth and employment.
The present framework is based on the One Health Joint Plan of Action (JPA), launched by the One Health Quadripartite (WHO, FAO, OMSA and the UN Environment Programme), and the definition of principles, and theory of change put forth by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (Winkler et al., 2025). Health JPA is built around six interdependent action tracks that collectively contribute to achieving sustainable health and food systems, reduced global health threats and improved ecosystem management and provide a framework for prioritising One Health action that requires investment.
Technology
Technology is available and mature enough to drive large-scale decarbonization today.
Renewable sourced electricity in Europe can be now cost-competitive with fossil alternatives, providing a solid foundation for electrification of transport, heating, and industry.
Innovation in batteries and storage is enabling the rise of an electrified, low-carbon mobility sector. Industrial processes operating below 500°C can be efficiently electrified, and household heating, cooling, and cooking already have viable electric alternatives
Future competitiveness will depend not only on discovering new technologies but on deploying existing ones at speed and scale. Yet, not all solutions are equally mature. In hard-to-abate sectors, hydrogen and CCUS remain promising but costly; long-duration storage will be critical but is still pre-commercial.
System integration is imperative: renewables, storage, and grids must evolve together. Without adequate grid flexibility, renewable capacity is clearly at risk, hence the need for stability on regulation to ensure appropriate investment
Hard-to-Abate Sectors
Direct electrification cannot cover all uses, especially in heavy industry and long-distance transport. Scaling such solutions depends on policy clarity, infrastructure readiness, and demand signals.
Full value-chain accountability, including Scope 3 emissions and imported carbon footprints must get clearer. Transparent certification systems for low-carbon products, similar to energy labels, could ensure that decarbonization efforts are not offset by leakage.
Nevertheless, there needs to be a link between hard-to-abate sectors with employment challenges. The transition must be just and inclusive, not disruptive.
Electrification now emerges as a cornerstone for long-term economic competitiveness, regional job creation, and enhanced energy security.
Grid investment is paramount. Expanding and modernizing electrical transmission and distribution networks is both essential and feasible. The regulated nature of these networks has to allow financing at a reasonable cost of capital, provided policy stability happens.
China’s pace of electrification demonstrates the power of strategic planning and the benefits of long-term industrial coordination (aligning generation, grid, and demand planning)
Overestimating technology only and underestimating behavioural change could derail the transition. Cultural acceptance, consumer choices, and education will shape the ultimate success of decarbonization. True energy transition is powered not just by technology, but by people.Real change begins with us.
Conclusion and proposals
Electrification through renewables has evolved from a climate objective to an economic necessity. Decarbonizing modern economies is no longer a theoretical ambition but a technically viable and socially imperative goal.
Energy transition now defines industrial competitiveness, job creation, and energy security.
- Reform Fiscal Distortions and Apply Polluter Pays Universally
- Fossil subsidies should be phased out, and taxation should reward clean alternatives.
- The polluter-pays principle must move from rhetoric to regulatory enforcement.
- Accelerate Permitting and Industrial Policy Alignment
- Simplify licensing and permitting to accelerate renewables and grid deployment.
- Deploy focused industrial policies to electrify heat, transport, and light industry.
- Expand Green Finance
- Ensure green finance measures real-world decarbonization, not symbolic labeling.
- Mobilize blended finance and public-private mechanisms to crowd-in private capital.
- Invest Heavily in Grids and Flexibility
- Recognize electrical networks as critical national infrastructure.
- Stability and predictability of regulation remain essential for attracting investors.
- Adopt a Staged Technology Strategy
- Focus on deployment of mature technologies now while piloting frontier options.
- Ensure a Just Transition
- Support workers and communities affected by fossil phase-outs through retraining and regional investment.
- Embed social dialogue and equity into all transition policies.
- Reframe Growth through Electrification and Innovation
- Economic growth and decarbonization are compatible if policy and investment align with innovation-led productivity.
- Electrification offers a new era of competitiveness and energy security.
Closing Remark
Energy transition is entering its decisive decade. Success will depend not only on technological or financial innovation but on policy coherence, collective will, and social inclusion. Decarbonizing modern economies is no longer an aspiration, it is an operational mandate and its implementation will define the prosperity of this generation and the next.
Authors
- Mariola Domenech, Sustainability Director, ACCIONA Energía.
- Roberto Fernández Albendea, Head of Corporate Sustainability, Iberdrola.
Moderator: Ángel Pérez Agenjo, Founder and Managing Partner, Trascendent. Member of the scientific Committee, Oxford Congress 2024.
Furthermore, this document is signed in a personal capacity and does not represent the official position of the institutions or entities to which the author may belong.
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