The drop in fossil fuel generation was driven by wind and solar growth as well as the recovery of hydropower.
Fossil fuels provided less than a quarter of the EU’s energy for the first time in April.
The good news comes from energy think tank Ember which found that the proportion of electricity generated by fossil fuels in the bloc fell to a record low of 23 per cent last month - a sharp drop of 22 per cent compared to April 2023 despite an increase in demand. It also surpasses the previous record low of 27 per cent from May 2023.
Wind and solar growth as well as the recovery of hydropower drove the fall in fossil fuel generation and increased the share of renewables in the electricity mix to a record 54 per cent.
Wind and solar alone generated more than a third of the EU’s electricity in April while gas and coal fell. Coal contributed just 8.6 per cent of the energy mix compared to 30 per cent in 2023. Gas provided 12.1 per cent of the EU’s electricity - a 22 per cent decline year-on-year.
I am pretty sure the EU will soon reach the final phase of the electricity transition. Soon it will be more about balancing the grid with storage and upgrading the electricity network and no longer about build out rates of solar and Wind.
That’s outstanding! I wonder if regular comparisons could help us laggards on the other side of the Atlantic. There’s got to be some competitive drive that can help us get off our butts.
I think we’re doing well at getting off coal (except West Virginia and Wyoming), but that just means natural gas dominates in most places
Offshore wind was the best way to go here. We’re lucky with the North Sea, it’s relatively shallow (just up to 40m deep in many areas) and very windy. Turbines are enormous machines now reaching more than 200m high and more than 10MW, and growing, but all are still rather far out it even barely disturbs views from land. I’m sure there’s a lot of room to grow offshore wind in gulf of Mexico and east coast. West Coast would be harder I think because deep.
The problem is that not so much industry is around the North Sea. For Germany most of the industry is in the middle and south, so very far away from the generated energy. But in general I think the EU does a great job to show other countries that we could do a lot to reduce CO2 emissions. If only others would care and try to compete here….
Headline days 25% of electricity. The article says 25% of energy. Journalism at its finest. Which one is it?
The 25% power obvs /s
I’m surprised geothermal isn’t in the mix there, or at least not in any big way. You would think Italy and Greece especially would want to take advantage of that.
geothermal
I would have expected that too. Always seemed a good sustainable additional solution to me.
afaik sustainable, but expensive… Italy and Greece arent really known to have fat stacks of cash for such projects
but expensive
Probably one of the reasons, other reasons could be ( geo?) complexity and the building (time)'of the whole unfrastructure. I haven’t digged very deep in this yet tbh.
In addition to cost (which I don’t have numbers for) there’s a question of efficiency: Geothermal heat it typically relatively “low temperature” heat, which makes for very inefficient power plants, especially in southern places like Italy and Greece, where there is little or no easy access to cold reservoirs (like the sea around Iceland).
Geothermal energy is the perfect source for heating cold places in winter, or otherwise heating places you want warm, but you need quite specific geological conditions for it to be an efficient means of producing electricity.
This is great, an example for the rest od the world!
Don’t drink more
Based
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