Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – At the energy think tank Ember, Matt Ewen and Sarah Brown have issued a new report showing that the use of fossil fuels in the European Union fell a remarkable 17% in the first two quarters of 2023, year over year. Indeed, hydrocarbons accounted for only a third of energy sources for electricity generation so far this year, an astonishing statistic.
The reduction in fossil fuel use was primarily owing to the abandonment of coal, which plummeted by almost a quarter (-23%) compared to the same period in the previous year. In May, 2023, the 27 nations of the European Union used coal to generate only 10% of their electricity, a record low unparalleled in recent years.
The use of fossil gas was also down, by 13%.
In some countries, the retrenchment from coal and gas was even more dramatic, with a 20% reduction in 11 EU countries, and in five the fall was by 30% year over year — those were Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland
One of the reasons for less resort to coal and fossil gas to generate electricity was that over-all demand for electricity in the 27-nation bloc fell 5% compared to the previous year. That fall idled coal plants in particular. There was less demand because people were conserving energy, especially last winter, when the Russian war on Ukraine had driven up energy prices substantially, so people cut back to avoid sky-high bills. There were also government directives for people to be more frugal with electricity use during the crisis.
Although many analysts had predicted that the Ukraine War’s impact on high energy prices would cause a spike in the use of coal and gas, no such spike materialized. People didn’t fire up coal plants to meet the challenge. Rather, they cut back their electricity use on the one hand and put up a lot of solar and wind plants on the other.
For instance, solar electricity generation in the first six months of this year increased by 13% compared to the same period in 2022.
Wind generation increased by 5%.
Some countries did especially well with renewables, with record amounts of power from these sources being generated in the first half of this year. Greece and Romania for the first time ever obtained over half of their electricity from renewables. Denmark and Portugal came in at 75% renewables-based electricity.
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The Ember team remarks that these signs point to substantial progress in decarbonizing Europe’s grid. This progress needs to be accelerated substantially, however, if the world is to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees C. (2.7 degrees F.) above the pre-industrial norm. Climate scientists fear that if we heat up the earth more than that, there is a danger that some climate systems will go chaotic, with dire implications for civilization. For instance, imagine a string of really destructive hurricanes hitting the same areas over and over again, leveling everything. How would those areas come back from such a repeated pummeling. Puerto Rico has had trouble coming back from just two such hurricanes, but what if it had been five or six?
So everyone should hurry up and install as many solar panels and wind turbines as we possibly can as soon as we possibly can. As the European statistics show, these energy sources are anyway cheaper than coal or gas, even if the health and climate impact of the latter is not taken into account.
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