Rising electricity prices in the United States – up about 32% over the past five years – have become an important issue for voters. Now imagine if prices had doubled. That's the incredible reality facing Europe. Europe's dash to renewables has come with eye-watering costs. How bad is it? Fully half of British households are expected to ration their electricity use this winter because of high prices. This a continent-wide affordability crisis for consumers, and it's ushering in the rapid deindustrialization of long-time powerhouse industrial economies. According to the International Energy Agency, the average electricity prices for heavy industry in the E.U. are twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Europe is not only losing industry thanks to its electricity affordability debacle, it's also finding it all but impossible to attract new energy-intensive industries, like the AI data centers leading the next economic revolution. Want to expand data center capacity in Germany? According to power providers in Frankfurt, it's going to take a decade to get electricity to do so. The lesson here couldn't be clearer: energy affordability, security and reliability, cannot be given second billing. As the U.S. faces soaring power demand, abundance is essential. That means expanding our energy systems and production to meet the moment, but it also means get even more out of the baseload capacity we already have.