{"id":3233,"date":"2026-09-16T20:26:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energianucleare.eu\/von-der-leyen-puts-nuclear-at-the-heart-of-the-eus-2040-energy-plan\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T20:26:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:26:31","slug":"von-der-leyen-puts-nuclear-at-the-heart-of-the-eus-2040-energy-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energianucleare.eu\/en\/von-der-leyen-puts-nuclear-at-the-heart-of-the-eus-2040-energy-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Von der Leyen puts nuclear at the heart of the EU&#8217;s 2040 energy plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, <strong>Ursula von der Leyen<\/strong> set a clear target: raising the share of electricity in the European Union&#8217;s energy consumption to <strong>46% by 2040<\/strong>, up from current levels. Nuclear energy is explicitly included in the roadmap, on equal footing with renewables and biomethane, in what the Commission President described as a &#8220;technology-neutral&#8221; approach.<\/p>\n<p>The projected saving amounts to <strong>\u20ac260 billion per year<\/strong> in reduced fossil fuel imports \u2014 a figure von der Leyen used as her primary argument for accelerating electrification. The logic is straightforward: less dependence on external suppliers means less exposure to the geopolitical swings of energy markets. Since tensions erupted around the Strait of Hormuz, Europe has spent an additional \u20ac90 billion on fossil fuel imports without adding a single megawatt-hour of domestic production.<\/p>\n<p>The 2026 address marks a visible break from the past. The words &#8220;green&#8221; and &#8220;climate&#8221; appeared just five times, compared to eighteen in the previous State of the Union in 2023. In their place: <strong>energy security<\/strong>, industrial competitiveness, and strategic autonomy. Nuclear energy, which for years lingered at the margins of official European debate, is now cited alongside renewables without caveats or qualifications. This is no mere semantic detail \u2014 it reflects a consolidated political stance, driven by France and a number of Central and Eastern European countries.<\/p>\n<p>On the infrastructure front, von der Leyen acknowledged the most critical bottleneck: last year the EU installed more than 80 gigawatts of new renewable capacity, yet a volume six times larger is still waiting to be connected to the grid. Doubling the electricity share without investing in grids and storage would get Europe nowhere. That is why the speech called for an urgent grids package to be fast-tracked through Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>This plan sits within the broader context of a European Commission that has already adopted a <strong>European Strategy for Small Modular Reactors<\/strong>, with the goal of bringing this technology online by the early 2030s. The Commission has earmarked additional guarantees of up to \u20ac200 million by 2028 to support the first commercial units of advanced nuclear technologies. The emerging picture is one where modular reactors complement existing large-scale plants within a more distributed and resilient electricity grid. If the roadmap holds, 2040 will not only mark an electrification milestone \u2014 it will also be the point at which next-generation nuclear begins contributing in a measurable way to Europe&#8217;s energy mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In her 2026 State of the Union address, the European Commission President set a target to double the share of electricity in EU energy consumption by 2040, placing nuclear on equal footing with renewables. A clear shift from the green rhetoric of recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":3230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Von der Leyen puts nuclear at the heart of the EU&#039;s 2040 energy plan - Energia nucleare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Von der Leyen 2026 State of Union: nuclear and renewables together to raise EU electricity share to 46% by 2040 and cut \u20ac260bn in fossil imports.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energianucleare.eu\/en\/von-der-leyen-puts-nuclear-at-the-heart-of-the-eus-2040-energy-plan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Von der Leyen puts nuclear at the heart of the EU&#039;s 2040 energy plan - 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