In 2017 in Europe more electricity was generated from renewable sources than from coal
© Agora Energiewende
31.01.2018:
In 2017, wind, sun and biomass, in the European Union have for the first time delivered more electricity than hard coal and lignite combined. Electricity generation from these renewables grew by 12 percent last year. Since 2010, the share of wind, solar and biomass electricity in the EU has more than doubled.
However, because hydropower production fell sharply in 2017, renewable electricity only achieved a slightly higher share in the EU than in the previous year, rising from 29.8 to 30.0 percent of electricity production, according to a study by Sandbag from Great Britain and Agora Energiewende from Germany.
In the past three years, the United Kingdom and Germany have contributed to more than half of the increase in renewables. In Germany, in 2017, 30 percent of the electricity was generated from wind, solar and biomass, and 28 percent in the UK. The strongest percentage growth was recorded in Denmark: in 2017, 74 percent of the electricity produced there came from wind, solar and biomass (+7 percentage points).
On the other hand, the study unveils very low growth in Slovenia, Bulgaria, France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Other countries had good growth at the start of the decade, but then gave up on renewables with almost no growth in the last three years, like Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Greece.
Exceptions are Croatia and Romania, where the share of power from wind, solar and biomass has been growing since 2011 from low single digits to 18 (Croatia) and 16 percent (Romania), respectively. Six countries still had less than 10 percent of their electricity production from wind, solar and biomass in 2017: Slovenia (4 percent), Bulgaria (7 percent), France (8 percent), Slovakia (8 percent), Czech Republic (8 percent) and Hungary (10 percent).
The report The European Power Sector in 2017 is available free of charge as PDF (52 pages) at www.agora-energiewende.org.
© PHOTON
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