France has decided to double public funding for electrification of homes and transportation to ten billion euros a year by 2030. This is not an isolated move: Paris is following a trajectory already set by the Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, which in March allocated five billion to accelerate the transition to renewables and incentivize the purchase of electric vehicles and the replacement of boilers with heat pumps.
In the background is the new energy crisis triggered by the tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, which has reignited the debate on how Europe can move away from dependence on fossil fuels. Madrid and Paris’ answer is clear: invest in electric, now.Italy‘s, for the moment, looks elsewhere, toward new suppliers of gas and oil.
Spain: five billion euros and a clear strategy
Among the major European countries, Pedro Sánchez’s Spain is the one that has responded most readily to the crisis. In March, the Madrid government passed a nearly five billion-euro decree that puts together immediate relief measures for households and structural incentives to speed up the transition. On the emergency front, the measure includes a drastic reduction in energy excise taxes – up to 60 percent on electricity – and a subsidy of twenty cents per liter of diesel fuel for the categories most exposed to high fuel prices.
But it is the more systemic part that is worth looking at. Spain has introduced a 15 percent income tax deduction for the purchase of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, flanked by a series of incentives for self-consumption of energy, heat pumps and energy upgrades to buildings. Businesses that invest in renewables will also be able to count on accelerated depreciation. This is not an emergency package: it is an attempt to use the crisis as leverage for a deeper transformation of the national energy model.
France: two out of three electric cars and one million heat pumps per year
A few weeks later, France also raised the curtain on its plan. The package presented by the Paris government largely follows the Spanish logic, but with even more ambitious numbers. State support for electrification measures is doubled, with the goal of reaching ten billion euros a year by 2030. Electrification is framed explicitly as a tool to recover energy sovereignty and defend citizens’ purchasing power.
On the mobility front, the government aims to increase electric car registrations to two out of three by the end of the decade, with incentives of up to €9,500 for passenger cars and up to €100,000 for vans and trucks. But the most significant ambition concerns buildings: France wants to install one million heat pumps a year until 2030, starting with the social housing stock. A ban on installing gas boilers in new buildings will come into effect from 2027, and renovation bonuses will be conditional on the adoption of electric heating systems.
It is a policy that puts together very short-term measures-lowering bills-with those that will change the country’s energy infrastructure over the next two decades.
Italy and the handbrake
Italy, faced with the same scenario, chose a different path. The Meloni government’s response to the crisis has been entrusted to stopgap measures: temporary cuts in excise taxes on gasoline and diesel, a bill decree approved by Parliament that provides limited aid to a small number of citizens and that the oppositions have openly called insufficient. On the electrification side – cars, heating, industry – there is no initiative comparable to those in Paris and Madrid. On the contrary: Parliament has passed an amendment to extend the final closure of the last coal-fired power plants, moving it to 2038.
The direction of travel seems opposite to that of France and Spain. Claudio Descalzi, Eni’s CEO, has called on the Italian government and European institutions to reconsider the stop on Russian gas imports. This is a signal that says a lot about where the focus of national energy policy is: not on reducing fossil demand, but on diversifying-or even recovering-sources of supply.
