“Europeans got more of their electricity from renewable sources than fossil fuels for the first time last year, according to an annual report from Ember and Agora Energiewende.
“The report, which has been tracking EU's power sector since 2015, found that renewables delivered 38% of electricity last year, compared to 37% delivered by fossil fuels.
“The shift comes as other sources, such as wind and solar power, have risen in the European Union. Both sources have nearly doubled since 2015, and as of last year accounted for one-fifth of electricity generation in EU countries, the report found. It's also the reason why coal power declined 20% last year, making up only 13% of electricity generated in Europe.”
Since the pandemic only led to a drop of 4% in European energy demand, this is in some sense not even due to Covid-19, so that’s good.
"Rapid growth in wind and solar has forced coal into decline, but this is just the beginning," said Dave Jones, senior electricity analyst for Ember and lead author on the report, in a statement. "Europe is relying on wind and solar to ensure not only coal is phased out by 2030, but also to phase out gas generation, replace closing nuclear power plants, and to meet rising electricity demand from electric cars, heat pumps and electrolysers."
Wind is basically going to save us, I think to myself more and more often. The Co2 emissions from building these bigger and bigger wind turbines are now recovered in less than a year’s operation, and there’s a scale factor: the bigger the turbine, the faster the payback. In my new favourite book, How Bad are Bananas? (coming soon!), it’s estimated that a 3MW turbine pays back its embedded emissions in only 92 days (given sufficient wind, of course). And now GE has come out with its 13MW turbine that will be able to power a town of 12,000 people!
And there’s a really interesting cumulative effect that I’ve not really been brave enough to think about so far. The more you produce renewable energy machines (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) using the current mix of energy sources (renewables and non-renewables), the greater the percentage of renewables in the mix the next time you build a renewable energy machine, so over time, the whole system greens itself in a virtuous loop. Of course, if the population is increasing too fast, you might not ultimately “win”, but in much of the high energy-sucking world at present, populations are flattish. Even though China is become richer and more energy-requiring per person, they’re already basically at peak population, and, fun fact: their working age population is already dropping!
[Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok and Bloomberg]