Belgium Faces 60% Power Surge, Needs 4 Plants by 2036
Belgium will need the equivalent of four large power plants and must import roughly 30 percent of its electricity by 2036 to keep pace with a near-60 percent surge in demand, according to the country’s high-voltage grid operator. The forecast, driven by electric cars, heat pumps, industry and data centers, has already produced an awkward preview: Dutch coal-fired plants were switched back on this summer to help power Belgium’s “climate-friendly” appliances.
Elia, Belgium’s transmission system operator, projects annual electricity consumption will climb from about 80.2 terawatt-hours (TWh) today to 128.3 TWh by 2036 — an increase of some 48 TWh, or nearly 60 percent in a decade, according to VRT NWS.
What Is Driving the Surge
Industry accounts for the largest share of the increase. Elia expects Belgian industry to need an additional 19.9 TWh by 2036 as fossil fuels are replaced by renewable electricity, VRT NWS reported. The electrification of cars, vans and trucks adds a further 14 TWh.
Heat pumps — among the most efficient ways to heat a home — add another 4.7 TWh as installations grow from roughly 1.5 million today to more than 3 million by 2036. While a heat pump extracts about three units of heat for every unit of electricity it consumes, it runs on power and can easily double a household’s annual electricity use.
Data centers form a smaller but highly visible slice. Large centers that rent servers to businesses — such as Google’s facility in Hainaut — consume about 3.2 TWh today, roughly the equivalent of one million households, or 4 percent of Belgium’s total electricity use. Elia expects that figure to roughly double to nearly 8 TWh by 2034, according to a companion VRT NWS analysis.
The Supply Gap
Meeting the projected demand will require an estimated 4,200 megawatts of additional generating capacity — comparable to four extra large nuclear reactors the size of Doel 4 — the Elia study found. The operator has warned that Belgium’s available capacity will struggle to keep up with demand after 2028, with a shortfall potentially reaching 3,400 to 6,700 megawatts by 2036, as reported by Trends/Knack.
Imports are set to rise sharply as well. Belgium imported about 10 TWh in 2024 — roughly 12 percent of consumption — but that figure is projected to reach 26 TWh by 2036, more than 30 percent of the country’s electricity. Not all of that imported power will be renewable.
The underlying forecast comes from Elia’s Adequacy and Flexibility study for Belgium (2026-2036), the operator’s fifth biennial assessment, published in June 2025.
A Summer Preview: Coal Power for EVs
Belgium’s two remaining reactors, Doel 4 and Tihange 3, have been offline since April 2026 for major modernization, forcing the country to lean on imports from the Netherlands and France.
Dutch gas plants could not cover Belgian demand at a competitive price, so Dutch producers restarted coal-fired plants, which proved cheaper than gas. By mid-August, Dutch coal plants had run as much as in all of 2025, and a large share of that power flowed to Belgium. The result, VRT NWS noted, was that Belgian air conditioners, heat pumps and electric cars were powered by highly carbon-intensive coal — “one of the many incongruities in Belgian energy policy.”
“Where are we going to get all that electricity? From Dutch coal plants?” VRT NWS energy specialist Luc Pauwels wrote, warning that neighboring grids are becoming “saturated.” Ireland has refused data centers over concerns about straining its own power supply, while the Netherlands’ grid is full and hotspots such as Frankfurt, Paris and London are increasingly overwhelmed — drawing attention to Belgium.
Why Data Centers Keep Coming
Carole Santens, director of the Belgian Digital Infrastructure Association, argues the country has strategic reasons to host such facilities. “It is important that we have data centers in Belgium,” she told VRT NWS, citing digital independence and the desire to store European data on European servers. “Data centers are part of a country’s strategic infrastructure.”
Still, the scale of requests carries uncertainty. Operators have reserved connection capacity at multiple sites, which — if all were realized — would multiply data center consumption several times over. Elia assumes many of those requests will not materialize.
Independent Scrutiny
Not everyone accepts the forecasts at face value. In a September 2026 consultation response, the Flemish utility regulator, the Vlaamse Nutsregulator, said it endorsed the importance of such studies but described them as a “complex exercise” and urged that their conclusions be interpreted with caution, noting the electricity sector is evolving quickly and forecasts carry inherent uncertainty. The regulator also favored market-driven solutions to meet future flexibility needs.
What to Watch
The pressure to decide is mounting. Elia’s next development plan must be approved by May 2027, and the Belgian government must settle on structural measures before then — options that include further nuclear lifetime extensions, new interconnectors such as the planned Nautilus link with the United Kingdom, additional offshore wind, and demand-side flexibility.
For now, the central question remains unresolved: whether Europe’s push to electrify heating and transport can be delivered without the continent’s grids — and its climate goals — buckling under the load.