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Renewable energies became the largest source of electricity in the European Union in 2020, overtaking fossil fuels for the first time. Germany and Spain also took this step individually last year, as did the UK, which officially left the EU in January 2020.
Renewable energies provided 38% of electricity in the EU last year, according to a report released today by energy think tanks Ember and Agora Energiewende. This gives renewables a narrow lead over generation from fossil fuels, which accounted for 37% of European electricity. The remaining quarter comes from nuclear power.
The rise of renewable energies is good news for the health of the planet. Yet renewables will need to grow at an even faster rate to avoid a future with more climate change-induced disasters.
“Renewable energies going beyond fossils are an important step in Europe’s clean energy transition. However, let’s not be complacent, ”said Patrick Graichen, director of Agora Energiewende, in a statement. “Post-pandemic recovery [programs] must go hand in hand with accelerated climate action. “
The European Union recently set a target of cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by around half by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels) and virtually eliminating them by 2050. This corresponds to what United Nations scientists believe it is necessary to keep climate change at a relatively manageable level. Europe will need to double the speed at which it has deployed renewables in 2020 to meet this EU commitment, according to Graichen.
Wind and solar power spurred the growth of renewables last year, while the growth of other non-carbon forms of energy, such as hydropower, stagnated. Together, wind and solar production saw a 10% increase in 2020.
Coal production, on the other hand, fell 20% last year. About half of that drop was due to new wind and solar capacity, according to the report. The rest can be attributed to an increase in natural gas and a drop in demand for electricity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This left coal production in 2020 at about half of what it was in 2015.
Nuclear power production also fell dramatically last year. It experienced a record drop of 10%, following the final shutdown of reactors in Sweden and Germany. Nuclear power is expected to continue to decline as more countries phase out their facilities, according to the report.
Taking all these trends into account, electricity in Europe in 2020 was 29% cleaner than five years ago. In 2015, each kilowatt hour of electricity used produced approximately 317 grams of carbon dioxide. Now, that same amount of electricity only creates about 226 grams of CO2. And the race to bring that number down to zero is only going up.
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