If it continues to invest in solar and wind, the European Union will manage to free itself from fossil fuels. That is what Ember's data shows.
"We are witnessing a historic shift and it is happening fast." So says Chris Rosslowe, analyst at think tank Ember, commenting on the new report on energy production in the European Union between January and June 2024. A six-month period in which, for the very first time, solar and wind surpassed fossil fuels. "If member states maintain the momentum in the deployment of wind and solar energy, then we will really start to see freedom from dependence on fossil energy," Rosslowe continues.
On one hand, then, there are fossil fuels. Obsolete, harmful to the climate and to health, and, fortunately, increasingly marginal in the European Union's energy mix. Despite a 0.7 per cent rise in electricity demand recorded after two years of decline, in the first half of 2024 fossil sources generated "just" 343 TWh — that is, 27 per cent of total production. That is 71 TWh (17 per cent) less than in the first half of 2023.
More specifically, still compared with the same period of the previous year, coal sees a drop of 24 per cent and gas of 14 per cent. This is due above all to five countries. First among them is Germany, where coal provided 20 per cent of electricity: just a year earlier it stood at 26 per cent. In total, German fossil energy production fell by 19 TWh, or 16 per cent. Italy also recorded a 21 per cent decline in fossil fuels, while Spain, France and Belgium have considerably reduced the role of gas.
All of this has produced tangible and immediate results. Compared with the same period last year, greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector fell by 17 per cent. They are therefore 31 per cent lower than in the first half of 2022 — a decline even more substantial than the one recorded between 2020 and 2018, with the imposition of lockdown measures due to the pandemic.
Conversely, renewable sources make a visible leap forward. More precisely, solar energy production grows by 25 TWh compared with the first half of 2023: the increase is therefore 21 per cent. Even more notable is the fact that this trend spans various territories, including Germany (+14 per cent), Spain (+13 per cent), Italy (+17 per cent) and Poland (+37 per cent). The increase in wind is also substantial: it amounts to 9 per cent compared with the first half of 2023, that is 20 TWh more, nearly half of which in Germany (5.5 TWh) and the Netherlands (4.6).
Taken together, then, renewable sources in the first half of the year reached 30 per cent of electricity generation in the European Union. Fossil fuels, by contrast, stopped at 27 per cent: a historic overtaking, never recorded before. As many as 13 out of 27 member states saw solar and wind produce more energy than fossil sources; and for Germany, Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands it is the first time. Italy does not appear on this list, where clean sources carry ever greater weight above all because they are driven by hydroelectric plants.
