From Crisis to Opportunity: Europe’s Renewable Future
Despite the challenges, the EU Green New Deal aimed at making the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050 has held together through the Ukraine shock, while fresh plans to slash dependency on Russian fossil fuels by 2027, using renewables and energy efficiency, are advancing.
Renewable technology is getting reliably cheaper while its competitors are getting more expensive, making renewables more affordable. By the end of 2022, wind and solar combined overtook natural gas in electricity generation.
European households and businesses turned to rooftop solar last year, adding three times as many gigawatts in 2022 as in the year before, as the Europe-Ukraine war brought new challenges for the EU.
Energy efficiency has had its moment with voluntary measures playing a role in Europeans' slashing electricity usage 20 percent.
Better technology can also help to slash energy usage, and heat pumps sales soared in 2022, doubling in countries like Poland, Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands.
Ember expects fossil fuel generation to fall by 20 percent this year, as hydro and nuclear rebound along with rising solar and wind, and gas will fall the fastest because it's now the most expensive fuel in Europe due to sanctions on Russia.
Solar capacity in Europe doubled since 2018 and is on track to triple in the next four years, indicating a significant shift towards renewables.
The good news from the crisis is that it has brought European leaders closer together. Europe's energy policy is now more coherent than ever and more ambitious, according to Ani Dasgupta, president of the U.S-based World Resources Institute.
The latest data on Europe's renewable transition tells a remarkably upbeat story about the hard things countries can accomplish on climate change with enough political will.
The beginning of the end of natural gas in Europe is likely to happen this year, as renewables take over and the continent moves towards a sustainable future.
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