A common electricity market in Europe will in all probability lead to a levelling out of the electricity price, which implies that Swedish consumers will face higher electricity prices with a European structure. This new market situation will force industry and energy suppliers to take new essential measures as actors in a deregulated European electricity market. In this thesis it is shown how over 30 Swedish small and medium-sized industries can reduce their use of electricity by about 50%. When scaling up the result to include all Swedish industry, the measures will lead to a significant reduction in global CO2 emissions, and a situation where Sweden will have a net export of electricity. Changing industrial energy use towards increased use of district heating will consequently affect the local energy suppliers. As a local energy supplier invests in CHP and co-operates on heat with an industry that has altered its energy use, the system cost will be halved. Considering higher European electricity prices, the benefits will be even higher with possibilities to reduce global emission with over 350%. In Sweden where district heating is very well established, heat driven absorption technology is especially favourable since it will lead to cost effective electricity production and increased utilization time for a CHP plant. Vapour compression chillers have been compared with heat driven absorption cooling for a local energy utility with a district cooling network and for industries in a Swedish municipality with CHP. The results show that the higher the share of absorption technology is, in comparison to compression chillers, the lower the production cost will be for producing cooling. This thesis illustrates measures for Swedish industry and energy suppliers in a fully deregulated European electricity market that will shift the energy systems in the direction of cost-effectiveness and resource effectiveness. The thesis also shows that the benefits of the measures will increase even more when accounting with electricity prices with a higher European structures. To methodically change the use of electricity would be an economical way to increase the competitiveness of Swedish plant in relation to other European plants. Taking advantage of these particularly Swedish conditions will contribute to the creation of lean resource systems, and as a result help the whole EU region to meet its commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. Altering industrial energy use towards less electricity and energy dependence will be a competitive alternative to new electricity production and help secure energy supply in the European Union.