Clean energy sources provided a record 47 percent of European electricity last year, ahead of fossil fuels.
A new report by London-based think tank Ember shows that solar energy has made record progress to provide 11 percent of Europe’s electricity. achieved and surpassed coal for the first time.
Solar and wind power combined have overtaken gas, which has declined over the past five years.
These are key milestones for achieving the European target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared to 1990 levels by 2030.
Amber found that Europe’s power sector emissions are now less than half of their 2007 levels.
This happened because politicians of all stripes supported renewables, the report said.
“Many national and European elections raised concerns that the clean energy transition would lose support. On the contrary, progress continued apace,” the report said.
Some of these common political motivations are economic.
Since 2019, solar and wind power have saved Europeans 59 billion euros ($61bn) in fossil fuel imports, Ember found, much of it gas.
During those five years, the share of fossil fuels in the power sector fell to 29 percent, while renewables increased.
‘The danger of America being left behind in the clean industrial revolution’
Europe has very few oil and gas resources and currently spends half a trillion dollars a year on fossil fuel imports. Its main hope for energy independence is to develop renewable sources.
In contrast, the United States is the world’s largest oil producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas (LPG), and President Donald Trump wants to further increase LPG production.
On Monday, his first day in office, he declared a national energy emergency that would expedite permits for drilling and pipeline construction.
He also signed an executive order temporarily freezing all US offshore and offshore wind farms.
Those policies underscore the differences between the U.S. and Europe on energy.
“The U.S. is bucking the global wind power trend,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s vision director. “Major economies are embracing wind as a source of cheap, clean electricity.
“America Risks Being Left Behind in the Clean Industrial Revolution.”
Amber found that the US generated just 10 percent of its electricity from wind last year, compared to 17 percent in Europe and 29 percent in the UK. The percentage was
On January 7, Trump said that leasing offshore areas for wind farms destroyed their value because it put them out of reach of oil and gas producers.
During his inauguration, just hours before signing the executive orders, Trump said, “America will once again be a manufacturing nation, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will have: any other manufacturing nation on Earth.” The largest amount of oil and gas in the country.
“The US is currently sovereign in oil and gas, producing 20 million barrels of oil equivalent per day,” Kostis Stamboulis, head of the Athens-based Institute of Energy for Southeast Europe (IENE), told Al Jazeera.
“Trump wants to make it an export powerhouse in both.”
The US is not the only country to increase its energy supply.
Several other countries, including Australia, Qatar and Mauritania, have announced new gas liquefaction trains, which will increase supply and lower prices.
“We believe there is going to be a global glut of LNG from 2026 to 2030, and this will lead to fierce competition and lower prices,” Stambolis said. This will make Europe’s needs more affordable. How this will affect the development of renewables is very difficult to say.
Ember believes that Europe will continue to invest in autonomy.
“The EU is moving towards a clean energy future powered by domestic wind and solar,” wrote Beatrice Petrovich, who co-authored the report. “This new energy system will reduce the bloc’s risk of fossil fuel price shocks, address the climate crisis and provide affordable energy.”
‘Difficult to replace fossil fuels in transport’
Not every energy analyst believes Europe will succeed.
“Renewables in electricity are the ‘easy’ part of the transition, especially at a time of high fossil fuel prices. It’s hard to replace fossil fuels in transport, and even harder in the heat sector,” Professor Jonathan Stern, who leads the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies, a think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Apart from Europe’s ambitions to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, two things, in particular, have fueled its transformation.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the creation of a fund to lift Europe out of recession.
The Recovery and Resilience Fund, as it was called, invested 1.8 trillion euros ($1.87 trillion), a third of it in green energy.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 accelerated Europe’s flight from fossil fuels as Russia cut off pipeline gas flows to the continent in an apparent attempt to blackmail Europe into stopping military aid to Kiev. gave
Previous Amber reports have found Europe’s solar and wind energy sectors to grow at a record rate of 5 percent in 2022 and again in 2023.
Meanwhile, Europe turned to buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from other producers, such as the US, Australia and Qatar.
Russia has joined the process, investing in liquefaction and shipping its gas in LNG carriers so that it has a Russian origin.
Stern cautioned that these changes in the gas market have given a boost to renewables that may be temporary.
“Gas prices have been very high in 2024 due to the transition from Russian gas to LNG where we are in a tight global market. This has benefited renewables greatly,” he said.
