While the energy transition to decarbonise the EU’s economy fully by 2050 will be felt economically in all member states, the costs of decarbonising can be substantially lowered through maximising the production of hydrogen, which in turn can be used to generate electricity. This column uses a global climate-energy economic model to compare three energy production scenarios. It finds that wind energy plus gasification of biomass, natural gas, or coal with carbon capture storage can reduce the cost of achieving Europe’s 95% emissions-reduction goal by 40%.