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The European Commission says it's on track to meet a key renewable energy objective and that 19% of the gross domestic electricity generated in the European Union's (EU) 27 member states will come from renewable sources by 2010 at current rates of progress, falling just short of the target of 21% set in 2001.
"Setting EU wide targets is a good policy instrument for increasing renewable energy use, but the negotiations on which country has to meet which specific target are bound to be difficult this autumn, and it is only when each country has clear targets that the progress can really be measured."
-- Stephanie Schlegel,Institute for International & European Environmental Policy
Leaders of the 27 EU countries agreed in March 2007 to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by the year 2020. They also pledged to increase the total energy from renewable sources to 12.5% by 2010, and then to 20% by 2020.
According to the latest figures, only 6.4% of the EU's energy is set to come from renewable sources in 2007, and analysts say it will be difficult for the EU to meet its target of getting 12.5% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.
To date only three countries—Germany, France and Sweden—are set to meet the EU target of 5.75% biofuels used in road transport by 2010.
However, a big increase in wind capacity in Germany, Spain and Denmark as well as in the UK, France, Italy and Portugal has boosted electricity from renewable sources to record levels, compensating for droughts that have hit Europe's hydroelectric power production, and paving the way for the EU to come within a whisker of reaching its electricity sector target of 21% by 2010.
A record 7,500 megawatts (MW) of wind capacity was built in Europe in 2006. Wind energy now supplies 3.3% of the EU's total gross electricity consumption. It is estimated that the wind power capacity will increase from today's 50,000 MW, producing 100THW of energy, to 180 GW, producing 500 TWH of electricity by 2020. Wind power could, some studies say, supply 16% of the EU's total electricity consumption by 2020.
In 2005, 16.3% of renewable electricity came from wind, 15.8% came from biomass, 1.2% from geothermal and 0.3% from solar power; the majority, 66.4%, came from the EU's expanding hydroelectric power sector.
Nine countries are on track to meet their national renewable electricity targets of 21% for 2010: Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxemburg, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands.
Germany has already overshot the EU target and 14 per cent of its gross electricity consumption is expected to come from renewable energy by the end of 2007. In 2000 the share was 6.3%.
About 22 billion kWh of electricity was produced by wind power in the first half of 2007 in Germany with 21,283 MW of installed capacity. The country is also the third biggest generator of electricity from biomass behind Finland and Sweden and ahead of Spain, the UK and Denmark.
New legislation that set a feed-in tariff guaranteeing a fixed price to suppliers has played a key role in increasing the amount of electricity coming from renewable sources in Germany, analysts say.
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was hopeful that Germany could extend its use of renewable energy to 30% by 2020.
Some European countries are set to miss all the EU renewable energy targets, including Belgium, the UK, Italy and Greece.
UK government officials estimated that the UK can hope at best to have 9% of its energy by 2020 from renewable sources; it currently has 2% from renewable sources.
Stephanie Schlegel from the Institute for International and European Environmental Policy in Berlin said that the key to meeting the renewable energy targets as well as to cutting GHG emission cuts was reducing the overall consumption of energy in the EU.
However, electricity consumption in the EU member states has continued to grow in spite of energy saving policies. Total electricity consumption in the residential sector for the EU grew by 10.8 per cent between 1999 and 2004 from TWH in 1999 to 765 TWH in 2004. The electricity in the industrial sector grew by 9.5 % between 1999 and 2004.
Also, Schlegel said that some of the EU renewable targets might not help cut GHG emissions: in particular the environmental benefits of the EU target on biofuels is hotly debated among experts.
Looking ahead, she said that the EU could only meet its target of 20% energy from renewable sources by 2020 if the next round of talks between the EU member states is successful.
The European Commission is opening up negotiations with member states this autumn to set specific targets for each country and for each renewable energy sector; national plans are to be finalized by December 2007.
"Setting EU wide targets is a good policy instrument for increasing renewable energy use, but the negotiations on which country has to meet which specific target are bound to be difficult this autumn, and it is only when each country has clear targets that the progress can really be measured," Schlegel told RenewableEnergyAccess.com.
Jane Burgermeister is a freelance science writer based in Austria.
They sure have different values over there. It is amazing. The Europeans cann't figure out why other econimies are booming while their long term economic growth is sluggish. Yet, they still insisted on over paying 2x, 3x, even 8x the market rate for electrical power.
In contrast the truly powerful and growing economies are powered by cheap coal and oil USA (4% unemployment 1/3 of many European Counties for the past decade) and CHINA, which is still cheaper in most cases than alternatie energies. (Excluding WIND) I am sure the European's value high unemployment with slim ecomonic growth which helps subsidies that great alternative energy program (I know, some of them create welfare jobs but it over pays the people and is in effective)
Because the USA and China are late comers to the alternative energy movement, We are getting the alternative energy products cheaper and most cost effectively than the Europeans. In reality, every $ the Europeans spend on research and deployment of Alternative Energy, is actually a subsidy to the USA, China, and the rest of the World because it drops the cost of future products.
I appriciate the subsidies. I do deserve them, since the gas bill for my SUVs are so large. I just wished our gov't would sit back and take advantage of this gift. When I read that the lab at so-and-so has created solar cells that will be cost effective and will be on the market in 2 years, we should just cancel all solar projects for 2 years and save the money. Common Sense.
Absolutely incredible. The EU has been leading the way to a sustainable future. The population in those countries has a differnet value set then other areas of the globe. The EU is creating a stable economy based upon energy efficiency first and renewable resources secondarily and they will see great benefits from there efforts (if they already haven't?) in the future. Good job EU may we here in the United States adopt the same values set that you have.
jb
I'm living in Granada, Spain for two years, after moving here from New Mexico. I have to say that people in the US have some strange ideas about "progress" and "living standards". Everyone here has good health care, not like in the US where about half of my friends either have no health insurance, or "catastrophic" insurance which costs $500 a month, with a $3000 deductable. People don't seem to be so driven to succeed, instead, the idea is to enjoy life. Our living costs are probably 2/3 that of the US, we don't need a car for example, since the bus comes every 10 minutes or so, right to the heart of downtown. The latest in CSP (the Andasol 100MW CSP with 7hours thermal storage) is being built right outside the city. Almost everyone takes August off, completely. Excellent tapas (little tasty foods) are free with your $2.00 beer, so a night out for a family of four including a plate of french fries for the boys is about 10 Euros. By the way, if the European economy is so pitiful, why is the Euro worth $1.35, when a few years ago it was $.85? I won't even mention the slim, beautiful women!
Some comments from an European:
It is of course very simplistic to assign a single reason - in this case Energy - to economic differences - GDP, unemployment, etc. - between states or blocks of states. Also as a researcher in Prospective I have learn to consider the mentioned issue of different 'sets of values' as indeed a crucial one. And anyway current GDP growth, unemployement rate etc. are poor indicators of the "well-being" and long term success of a country.
So here are some non-Energy type factors for us to think about:
In spite of larger unemployment and lower GDP, surveys say than people from most EU countries are quite more happy with their lifes than US people (decadent people often are happier, eh eh eh).This has partly to do with stronger social security support and public health systems - of course partly financed by huge taxes on energy, how else?
Anyway GDP growth is partly proportional to population growth - much larger in US than EU...
... and GDP growth could be much higher in EU if we had not so many boring "EU Directives" pushing and pushing and pushing for higher standards of all kinds - I suppose in US culture this can be viewed as unbearable interference of governments in people's lifes, but we are ok with that.
Not to forget that we take more vacations and work less than in US - we are ok with that too, eh eh eh!
Many more things could be said, but it's already a too long post,
Keep cool
Ricardo Aguiar (Lisbon, Portugal)
Jim , thanks for your amazing insight that one should never invest in new technologies because all the benefits accrue to the latecomers.
On behalf of the rest of the world may I publically thank the US for all their wasted investment in chip technology computers and operating systems that has made the rest of us so rich and the US so poor.
I hate to think of Bill Gates, Andy Goves, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs et al living in their cardboard boxes on Skid Row.
Jim, you really must get a grip on what you mean by growth. You are obviously using a definition which counts the unnecessary rebuilding of New Orleans ( every few years) as growth. Cleaning up the cyanide and heavy metal mine tailings in montana, and moving the odd city because the water supply has been polluted is growth. The additional healthcare costs and deaths due to strip mining and coal fired powerstations are growth. Presumably you are in favour of bulldozing the entire US and rebuilding it to create more growth.
If you bother to look into the definitions of growth used in in the US and the EC for example you will find that once the more obvious distortions have been removed their growth is about the same, with europe being slightly ahead over the last decade.
Looking across the world in developed countries there is little evidence of a strong correlation between electricity prices and growth . As prices rise economies move from low added value industries based on energy and raw materials, to high added value ones based on smarts.
Johns comment is very germane. If you look at patents per person across economies, and across industries you will see that the US is dropping proportionately , Japan, Sweden, and Finland ( very high energy costs) are very high in the tables. China interestingly is rising fast and may well overtake the US in patents in a few years. It is also very aware of the pollution costs of their current energy strategy and struggling to find a renewable way forward as pollution costs consume increasing proportions of their "growth"
Solar Photo-Voltaic (PV) and other renewable energy technologies are gaining acceptance as a way of maintaining and improving living standards without harming the environment. In recent years the idea of introducing solar PV power into the electrical network has become quite popular. The size of the Grid-Connected (GC) plants varies from a few kW to MW. A grid connected PV system is able to supply power into the electrical distribution grid of a utility company. In this way there is diversity in potential as the power is generated from all the generators in parallel. The performance ratios of GC systems are in the range of 40 to 70 %.
GC systems, such as PV in Buildings, also have a significant potential, as has been proved in countries where a partnership has been established between government and industry (e.g. The Netherlands, Germany, Japan) to increase market sizes whilst at the same time bringing down costs. Existing players are increasing manufacturing capacity, and new companies are entering the market. The application of Building Integrated (BI) PV systems is particularly interesting because it demonstrates several advantages compared with conventional PV power plants. Moreover, on-site generation has the additional efficiency benefit of avoiding the transmission and distribution losses associated with centralized generation.
The long-term goal is to realize GC Solar System (GCSS) that produce electrical as well as thermal energy at sufficiently low cost. This means that the investment costs has to be lowered as much as possible. This can only be achieved by careful design, proper realization, optimization, standardization and mass production. In addition to this, PV/T building elements should also be designed in such a way that they meet architectural requirements and technical standards and look attractive to consumers as well. From this standpoint the recent study [1] was undertaken to include proposed GCSS targets the two dominating energy demands in residential buildings: low level energy for water heating and high level energy (electricity) to cover a significant fraction of the electricity demand. [1] Hussain Alrobaei, 2007 , The Effectiveness of Combined Heat and Power Solar Water Heating Systems/ environmental-expert.com/resultarticlept.asp.
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