First, energy and electricity prices have been rising in the EU for several years, sometimes manyfold, because of the ongoing implementation of EU Green Deal, the EU 2030 goals, and Net Zero for 2050 plans, combined with other also purely political factors. It is estimated that the net zero and energy transition policy in Europe today represents up to 40 percent of many electricity bills of Europeans who already have difficulty making ends meet.

The "Polycrisis" Is Now the Excuse for Interventionism
In "Turning the European Green Deal into Reality" (2023) from Strategic Perspectives—an EU-centered, climate-focused policy think tank driving effective climate action and the transition to net-zero emissions in Europe—the following is claimed:

EU decision-makers have put Europe on an irreversible decarbonisation trajectory. On a continent with limited gas and oil resources, Europeans have no interest in going back to the pre-war status quo.

What hubris of the "anointed" (to use Thomas Sowell's expression) is necessary by an unelected globalist think tank, to subjectively assert such a direction on behalf of all the European peoples. This, unfortunately, is the norm. Further, the executive summary states that, not only climate change is driving energy transition now, because it is a "polycrisis":

The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, as well as industrial competition from the US and China, have not lowered the importance of the European climate agenda. On the contrary, the European Green Deal has proven to be a unifying solution to the multiple crises facing Europe, including economic recovery from the pandemic, climate change, high dependency on energy from Russia and competition on net-zero technologies from China and the US.

Since the climate change mantra alone might not be that convincing anymore, additional reasons, or causes, are being touted. Massive public spending is supposedly needed in order to save and transform the entire economic fabric of European societies, not only because of CO2, but also because of the pandemic, Russia, the cost of living, and industrial competition. This was also the argumentation line pushed by the Draghi plan, with which the EU is enamored.

Anything goes in order to justify more public spending and further centralization of power in Brussels. What they obviously will not mention is that these crises have all been generated and created by the disastrous actions or the disastrous inaction (depending on the case) of the European political class. It is yet another example of why it is so important to understand causality in economics:

It seems counterintuitive to believe that an agent responsible for social problems should also be the one to solve those problems. The only reason this flawed logic continues to be accepted is because of errors of causality. The real causes for economic problems are not well understood by the general public and are often confused with its consequences.