European Union sets New Records for Wind and Solar Energy Production
Since the start of the war early this year, a new report discovers that approximately a quarter of the European Union’s electricity has originated from wind and solar. A record-setting number and the development in wind and solar has saved the EU €11 billion in avoided gas costs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made acquiring Russian gas politically untenable.
Within the bloc of 27 countries, 19 surpassed their solar and wind energy production records, according to the new report published by energy think tank Ember and climate think tank E3G.
Poland, which has historically depended significantly on coal, saw the largest bump with a 48.5 % rise in solar and wind generation. Spain led the group with the greatest improvement regarding absolute energy generation from solar and wind. It added 7.4 TWh, a 35 % rise in solar and wind energy generation. All that additional power served as a substitute for a drought-driven decrease of 21 % in hydroelectricity generation throughout the European Union.
Still, a long way to go
Europe is still in the middle of a years-long electricity crisis since climbing gas requirements collided with a pinch in supply in 2021, as economic activity intensified following pandemic-driven shutdowns. This year, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine made the EU’s dependence on Russian gas all the more painfully evident. Before this year’s conflict, around 45 % of the bloc’s imported gas supply originated from Russia.
The bloc had already been thinking of strategies to transition to cleaner sources of power to restrict the effects of climate change, which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated. The European Commission suggested a strategy this year to cease using fossil fuels from Russia “well before 2030” and improve the share of renewables in its total energy mix to 45 % by the same period.
There’s still a long way to achieve any of those objectives. While wind and solar produced roughly a quarter of the EU’s energy mix around March and September, gas still remained to supply approximately a fifth of the bloc’s electricity. The energy crisis has also forced some nations to reconsider their programs for nuclear energy. Germany, which was expected to shut down its last nuclear power plants by the end of the year, now says it will maintain the plants operational through mid-April of 2023.
War isn’t the only reason for Europe’s new reliance on renewables. Nations are also preparing for a United Nations climate conference in November to follow up on promises made in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
At the moment, the world is only on course to lower planet-heating CO2 emissions by 7 % from 2019 levels by 2030, according to a report released yesterday by the NGO World Resources Institute. The world needs to recede its emissions by 7.6 % every year this decade to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. That’s significantly more solar and wind energy to deploy in Europe and around the world.
Originally published by: The Verge
