Renewable Energy Surpassed Fossil Fuels for European Electricity in 2020
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Landmark moment as EU renewables overtake fossil fuels
Climate neutrality by 2050 means renewables growth will further accelerate
Ember and Agora Energiewende's fifth annual report tracking Europe's electricity transition was published on 25th January 2021. It revealed that renewables overtook fossil fuels to become the EU's main source of electricity for the first time in 2020.
[...] Renewables rose to generate 38% of Europe's electricity in 2020 (compared to 34.6% in 2019), for the first time overtaking fossil-fired generation, which fell to 37%. This is an important milestone in Europe's Clean Energy Transition. At a country level, Germany and Spain (and separately the UK) also achieved this milestone for the first time. The transition from coal to clean is, however, still too slow for reaching 55% greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050.
[...] Wind generation rose 9% in 2020 and solar generation rose 15%. Together they generated a fifth of Europe's electricity in 2020. Since 2015, wind and solar have supplied all of Europe's growth in renewables, as bioenergy growth has stalled, and hydro generation remains unchanged.
Renewables rise is still too slow - wind and solar generation growth must nearly triple to reach Europe's 2030 green deal targets: from 38 TWh per year average growth in 2010-2020 to 100 TWh per year average growth between 2020-2030. It is encouraging that wind and solar increased by 51 terawatt-hours in 2020, well above the 2010-2020 average, despite facing some impact from Covid-19. The IEA forecast record wind and solar capacity growth in 2021. Still, EU countries need to step up their 2030 commitments considerably. At the moment, national energy and climate plans only add up to about 72 TWh new wind and solar per year, not the 100 TWh/year that are needed.
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