Another Crisis Asks for Engineers

Europe spends nearly €400 billion every year on fossil fuel imports. After weeks of closure in the Strait of Hormuz, and despite recent signs of a diplomatic opening, energy prices remain elevated and that bill is growing. But so is the momentum behind European energy technology. From next-generation battery manufacturing to AI-driven grid optimisation, the building blocks of energy independence are taking shape.

In this edition, we’ll cover:

Berlin, Germany | 24—26 April, 2026

The Battery Hackathon is back in Berlin. Over three days, teams of developers, engineers, and energy professionals will tackle challenges across grid resilience, decentralised renewables, AI-powered forecasting, and demand-side flexibility.

Whether you want to prototype new energy trading platforms, design scalable storage solutions, or build resilient tools for critical energy infrastructure, this is your space to experiment and execute.

Our four partners are shaping the challenges: CustomsCells, a German developer and manufacturer of high-performance lithium-ion battery cells for automotive, aviation, and defense applications, anchors the hardware side. alteva, the deep-tech battery startup building ultralight battery systems for electric aviation and heavy-duty mobility. The European Energy Exchange (EEX) contributes its perspective on pan-European market design and trading infrastructure. And Enefit, Estonia's largest energy provider, brings utility-scale expertise in battery storage and grid management.

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online | April 16, 2026 19:00-20:00 CEST

Jan Bartoš, Chief AI Ambassador at ČEPS (the Czech transmission system operator), will talk about where AI is already deployed across the energy value chain: grid operations, forecasting, trading, and asset management. The session covers the shift from static planning to continuous optimisation, and how Europe can build serious digital capabilities while maintaining sovereign control over critical infrastructure.

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The Hormuz crisis is now well into its second month. Oil prices remain elevated, gas bills are rising, and European governments are scrambling for responses. Most of the debate has centered on short-term relief: windfall taxes, reserve releases, price caps. But the ECB just weighed in with a very different framing.

On 7 April, Executive Board member Frank Elderson published a blog post arguing that Europe's fossil fuel dependence is not just an energy policy problem. It is a monetary policy problem. Every time a geopolitical shock hits, the ECB faces the same impossible choice: tighten to fight inflation, or loosen to protect growth. As long as European energy prices are set by events in the Strait of Hormuz, that bind will keep recurring.

The data Elderson cites is worth sitting with. Europe spends nearly €400 billion per year on fossil fuel imports. In Spain, wholesale electricity prices have dropped roughly 40% since 2019, driven almost entirely by the expansion of wind and solar. The marginal cost of domestically produced renewable energy once the infrastructure is in place is effectively zero. The European Commission estimates that €660 billion per year in clean energy investment is needed through 2030. That is a large number. But the cost of repeated fossil fuel crises is higher.

Elderson's conclusion is not subtle: the question is no longer whether Europe can afford the energy transition, but whether it can afford not to make it.

European batteries cost too much. But the reason is not cheap Chinese labour or massive energy subsidies. According to the IEA's Energy Technology Perspectives 2026, published in late March, higher manufacturing efficiency accounts for over 40% of the cost difference between Chinese and European battery production. Production costs in Europe are roughly 50% above Chinese levels, yet energy accounts for only a small fraction of direct manufacturing expenses. The real gaps lie in automation rates, scrap rates, and production line downtime. In short: these are engineering problems with engineering solutions.

The scale of the challenge is sobering. European battery cells are 90% more expensive than Chinese equivalents, according to a March 2026 Transport and Environment analysis. China manufactures more than 80% of the world's batteries. A single month of disruption in Chinese battery exports would strip roughly $17 billion from global electric vehicle production. Europe's dependence on Chinese battery supply chains is, in its own way, as dangerous as its dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels.

But the gap is not permanent. Transport and Environment projects that with genuine scale-up, the cost premium could narrow to around €500 per vehicle by 2030. That figure demands sustained demand, continued investment, and sharply improved manufacturing execution. Northvolt's collapse showed what happens when scale-up stalls.

This is exactly the territory the Berlin Battery Hackathon was designed for. On 24–26 April, over a hundred engineers will spend three days building solutions to challenges in grid resilience, energy storage, and forecasting. The cost gap will not close in a weekend. But the engineers who close it will start somewhere.

→ Read the full report here

Since our last edition, European energy startups have raised over €530M across 12+ notable rounds. Iron-fuel pioneer RIFT and electric freight company Einride led the pack, followed by two French nuclear SMR deals and a strong showing in battery storage, grid AI, and electric mobility. Capital continues to flow across the full stack, from deep-tech hardware to energy software.

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