Energy policy in Belgium - 1800 companies waiting for an electricity connection
Anyone who wants to expand or start a business in Belgium today, electrify a factory, or install a charging station soon discovers that energy policy is not a policy paper, but a power socket with a connection that never arrives. Grid congestion, electrification, competitiveness, and energy policy: these are the four words that will determine in the coming years whether Belgium remains an industrial country or becomes a museum of good intentions.
The paradox is painful. Entrepreneurs are told by Brussels, Flanders, and Europe that everything must become electric. But as soon as they do what the government asks, the grid turns out to be full, the connection uncertain, and the energy bill for citizens and businesses structurally higher than that of competitors in the United States, China, or other manufacturing countries.
For years, the political message was simple: move away from fossil fuels, invest in electricity, build sustainably, take responsibility. It sounded modern, moral, and inevitable. But policy only becomes serious when it meets physical reality. And that reality is copper, cable, transformers, permits, peak capacity, and affordability. That is exactly where Belgium is getting stuck.
The energy transition was sold as a straight highway toward a green future. But for many companies, it now feels like a winding road full of endless detours, starting with a subsidy or registration form and ending with a waiting list for a grid connection.
The figure in the headline - 1,800 companies already waiting for an electricity connection - is more than a statistic. It is an important warning. Even though public discussion recently focused mainly on hundreds of stalled cases, the direction is clear: the number of applications is rising, capacity is lagging behind, and the waiting list is becoming a major economic brake on the future earning capacity of our country.
Grid operator Fluvius reported in April 2026 that 760 applications would have a prospect of connection thanks to a relaxed flexible-connection formula. At the same time, the grid operator referred to 500 pending applications for industrial battery projects. The Flemish network of enterprises, Voka, had already warned earlier that companies are stuck in long queues or sometimes cannot obtain a traditional connection, and that without electricity there can be no business activity, no growth, and no transition.
That is the heart of the problem. An energy transition that asks companies to use more electricity but cannot supply them with electricity is not a transition. It is administrative overconfidence from politicians who are more humanities-minded than technically minded. Europe and Belgium have stacked climate targets as if targets themselves were turbines. Deadlines have been set, bans announced, emissions standards tightened, and reporting obligations invented. But a factory does not run on intentions. A cold-storage facility does not cool on a Green Deal. A metal company does not melt steel with a press conference.
Meanwhile, the global competition is not taking place in the meeting rooms of Brussels, but on industrial estates in Texas, China, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. There, what matters is not how many pages a sustainability report contains, but how much a kilowatt-hour costs and how quickly a connection can be delivered.
The United States has enormous amounts of cheap energy, scale, gas, nuclear power, and a political culture in which industrial competitiveness is once again viewed strategically. China is simultaneously building hundreds of coal-fired power stations, nuclear plants, solar parks, wind farms, grids, and factories at a pace Europe cannot match. Other countries look at European climate targets and mainly see an opportunity: if Europe makes itself more expensive, production will move automatically. In other words, part of the growth in the US, China, and other countries comes from companies leaving our region. In the Netherlands, particularly in Rotterdam, an exodus is already underway in the petrochemical cluster in the port.
That is the uncomfortable truth Belgian politicians prefer to talk around. Of course China is also investing in renewable energy. Of course the US is divided on climate policy. But for the entrepreneur deciding where to build a factory, the difference is crystal clear: energy must be available, predictable, and affordable. If Belgium says, “You must electrify, but your connection will come later, perhaps flexibly, possibly interruptible, and at high cost,” then the foreign competitor says, “We can deliver tomorrow, and at a low price.” That is not a detail. It is the difference between growth and departure.
The flexible connection is now being presented as a solution. In reality, it is often an elegant name for scarcity. A company may be allocated capacity, but must temporarily reduce consumption when grid congestion threatens. For some sectors, that can work. Perhaps for a battery park. Possibly for an office. But for a production company, a refrigeration installation, a logistics center, a chemical plant, or an automated production line, “you will get power, except when we ask you to use less” is not full-fledged industrial policy. It is emergency management.
Anyone who voices this criticism is quickly accused of opposing the energy transition. That is too easy. The question is not whether companies must become more efficient, cleaner, and more innovative. The question is whether policy may continue pretending that objectives are more important than feasibility.
Belgium has for years made its energy supply uncertain through nuclear policy and shut down five of its seven nuclear reactors, even though they provide stable, cheap, and clean electricity. Belgium also needed gas-fired power stations as an interim solution, scaled up grid investments too late, and accelerated electrification at the same time. That is like requiring everyone to take the train before the tracks have been laid.
Then there is the cost. According to the International Energy Agency, EU electricity prices for energy-intensive industry in 2025 remained on average more than twice as high as in the US and almost 50 percent higher than in China. That figure is devastating. For industry, energy is not a side condition; it is a raw material. A baker, a data center, a steel company, a greenhouse grower, a charging operator: all compete not only on labor and innovation, but also on electricity. If Europe remains structurally more expensive, no climate ambition will keep production here.
The result is predictable. Companies postpone investments, install diesel generators, choose smaller projects, or look across the border. The government will then regret this, set up committees, and invent new support mechanisms to repair the damage caused by its own policy. This creates a vicious circle: first energy is made scarce and expensive, then the losers are compensated, then taxes or grid tariffs are raised to pay for that compensation, after which energy becomes even more expensive again.
A mature energy policy would begin with honesty. Say that electrification is only possible if the grid is first heavily reinforced. Say that climate goals without affordable baseload power, nuclear energy, storage, faster permitting, and industrial prioritisation are not achievable. Also say that Belgium does not live in a vacuum. If Europe greens faster than it can protect its competitiveness, it does not export values, but jobs, production, and emissions. We then close factories here only to import products from countries where energy is cheaper and emissions are viewed less strictly. That is not climate policy. That is accounting self-deception, economic suicide, and, strategically, a gigantic mistake.
The core question is therefore not whether Belgium should become green, but whether Belgium still wants to produce. Anyone who wants that must treat energy not as a moral project, but as strategic infrastructure. Build grids and reopen nuclear plants before mandating electrification. Give productive investments priority over speculative applications. Keep nuclear energy seriously in view instead of closing nuclear reactors.
See our article from last week about the closure of Belgian nuclear power plants:https://www.benews.media/post/energy-policy-in-belgium-privatising-supply-french-state-companies-closing-nuclear-plants
Speed up permits. Stop pursuing policies that tell companies to grow, become greener, and wait all at the same time.
As long as 1,800 companies are waiting for a connection, every speech about the energy transition rings hollow. A country that cannot provide its entrepreneurs with electricity does not have a future plan; it has a problem. And as long as Europe pretends that the rest of the world follows the same expensive rules, the conclusion will be harsh but logical: the energy transition as currently conducted is not doomed to fail because of a lack of ideals, but because of a lack of realism.
Image credits: Matthew Henry via Unsplash
