EU overachieves 2020 renewable energy target: With more than half of gross final energy consumption from renewable sources, Sweden (60%) had by far the highest share among the EU Member States in 2020, ahead of Finland (44%) and Latvia (42%).

28 comments

  1. At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest proportions of renewables were registered in Malta (11%), followed by Luxembourg (12%) and Belgium (13%).

    At EU level, the share of gross final energy consumption from renewable sources reached 22% in 2020. This is 2 percentage points (pp) above the target level for 2020, as included in Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources.

    This is a major achievement and an important milestone in the EU’s path towards climate neutrality by 2050.

  3. What’s going on in the Netherlands? I thought they were good at that sort of thing — windmills, innovative design, etc.

  8. To be fair, 2020 was a fluke.

    In 2021 our (Netherlands) emissions were already higher than the 2020 target. For example, Q1 2021 was 1,4% higher than Q1 2020.

    In Q2 it was 14,1% higher.

    Based on the news I saw last year in this sub, that seems to be true for most European countries.

  11. To be fair, a lot of this can be explained by geographic determinism.

    I.e. Sweden, Norway and Finland has a lot of rivers for hydropower, Iceland has a lot of geothermic energy, and central Europe has a lot of coal deposits.

  14. I don’t think this is all energy consumption but just electrical energy consumption, right?

  16. Smells bullshit from a mile away.

    1. Burning so called “biomass” is still burning stuff, however much we try to call it green
    2. In Poland, according to state provided data, Wind accounted for 10%, solar for 1% and hydro for 2%. That’s 13%, not 16%. **IF** you add biomass, which was 5% it’s 21%, not 16%.

    In conclusion, bullshit.

  18. Around 20 percent of Finland’s electricity is produced with hydro power plants which has led to salmon going extinct in almost every river here. It might be “renewable”, but definitely not environmentally sustainable.

  20. France is at 19.1 % but it is not an underachiever. Actually it is the greenest (in CO2 terms) country in continental Europe (see [https://app.electricitymap.org/map](https://app.electricitymap.org/map)).

    That is why we want nuclear power. Maybe building new nuclear power plants can be discussed, but discontinuing existing ones which are providing green energy is just mad.

  23. We’re cheating. Lots of hydro power here from the great rivers up north.

    Edit: by “cheating” I meant its not a fair comparison with other countries with out geographies.

  27. I was wondering to myself why the benelux is so bad. But then i realized, its a small, greypatch of flat land withtout much potential for hydro or solar that has a lot of people/density and industry.

  28. Lol, France with all their nuclear power misses their target, while Germany surpasses it after shutting down all nuclear plants.

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