Category: Mega Trends & Analysis Europe

Solar Farm Development Trends and Future Plans in UK

Solar Farm Development Trends and Future Plans in UK

May 27, 2024 | , , ,

The government has set the aim of “a fully decarbonised, reliable and low-cost power system by 2035”. To meet its sixth carbon budget (a 78% reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2035), the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee estimated that solar power would need to provide 60 TWh of energy by 2035. It also estimated that an additional 3 GW of solar power would need to be installed per year to reach that level. One of the government’s aims is to “ramp up” the deployment of rooftop and ground-mounted solar systems to achieve a fivefold increase in solar power by 2035.

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Replacing nuclear with renewables in France, Belgium and Spain

Replacing nuclear with renewables in France, Belgium and Spain

May 20, 2024 | ,

This extract focuses on three EU countries with installed nuclear capacities and examines the detailed PAC trajectories. France is by far the country with the largest nuclear capacity in the EU. Belgium is somewhat of an emblematic case in the current EU debate on the possibility of the extension of nuclear reactors which are close to retirement. In the PAC scenario, Spain has one of the smoothest paths to a complete and early nuclear phaseout, largely completed by 2025 and reaching zero in 2030.

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Scaling up renewables in Central and Eastern Europe 

Scaling up renewables in Central and Eastern Europe 

April 15, 2024 | , ,

As 3SI countries exit from fossil fuels, electrification and sector coupling driven by clean technologies will provide new opportunities for local communities. Going forward, the expansion of wind and solar can lead to independence from fossil fuel imports and turn the CEE region into a clean energy hub. This will improve the bloc’s energy security in the face of war, while also strengthening grid resilience, local economies and fostering innovation in an increasingly electrified world in the long term.

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Grid plans misaligned with renewable energy targets in Europe: EMBER

Grid plans misaligned with renewable energy targets in Europe: EMBER

March 16, 2024 | , , ,

Grid investments across Europe must be stepped up and planning processes fully aligned with the new reality of the energy transition. Grids have recently skyrocketed onto the political agenda. As clean technology deployment surges forward, it is increasingly coming up against the bottleneck of insufficient grid capacity, leading to connection delays, curtailment and increased costs for consumers. The analysis, based on 35 national grid development plans from European Transmission System Operators (TSOs) of electricity, shows that planned network developments in a number of countries are out of step with the reality of the energy transition.

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Floating Solar in Europe: Potential, growth trends and opportunities

Floating Solar in Europe: Potential, growth trends and opportunities

March 8, 2024 | , ,

Floating solar is already a well-established market in the south of Europe owing to plenty of sunshine that the area receives. Many of these countries, in fact, have supportive policy instruments for floating solar. Taking lessons from the south, the northern nations are also now witnessing large uptake as they have abundant water bodies. Offshore solar is also expected to become a big market in the coming years in the continent with some policy developments already underway.

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Coal continues to be undercut by new wind and solar in EU: EMBER

Coal continues to be undercut by new wind and solar in EU: EMBER

February 17, 2024 | , , ,

The EU electricity mix reached a new milestone with more than two-thirds of electricity coming from clean sources for the first time. Wind and solar combined to produce 27% (721 TWh) of total EU electricity generation – more than nuclear at 23% (619 TWh) and hydro at 12% (317 TWh). Bioenergy and other renewables contributed a further 5.9% (159 TWh). The share of fossil generation fell to its lowest ever – just a third (33%) of total generation, down six percentage points from 39% in 2022.

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Bavaria’s Onshore Wind Potential Remains Untapped: EMBER

Bavaria’s Onshore Wind Potential Remains Untapped: EMBER

January 29, 2024 | , ,

This report examines the untapped potential of onshore wind in Bavaria and how increased deployment could strengthen the region’s energy sovereignty and reduce the costs of continued high dependence on imported gas. The Bavarian government has set a target to double the amount of electricity generated from renewables from 40 TWh to 78 TWh by 2030.

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EU Grid Action Plan: Seeks to address missing links of energy transition

EU Grid Action Plan: Seeks to address missing links of energy transition

January 8, 2024 | ,

EU’s electricity consumption is expected to increase by around 60 per cent between now and 2030. The EC’s Action Plan for Grids aims to address the missing links of the clean energy transition. It will ensure that EU grids operate more efficiently and are rolled out further and faster. It addresses the main challenges in expanding, digitising and better using EU electricity T&D grids.

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Spain emerges as Europe’s largest solar market in 2022

Spain emerges as Europe’s largest solar market in 2022

August 28, 2023 | , ,

Solar power is entering a maturity phase in Spain: with around 8.4 GW of annual installed capacity in 2022, the country experienced its best year ever for solar PV deployment, becoming the largest European PV market in 2022. Since 2020, over 18 GW has been installed, leading to a 156% increase of the solar PV operating fleet in the last 3 years. However, there is no room for complacency: both policymakers and industry will have to actively protect the country’s GW-size industry.

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Europe’s EV Charging Infrastructure: No block to EV adoption, indicates T&E report

Europe’s EV Charging Infrastructure: No block to EV adoption, indicates T&E report

July 7, 2022 | , ,

Over the past few years, deployment of public charging infrastructure across the EU has grown substantially with swift EV market penetration. By the end of 2021, the 27 countries of the EU (EU-27) had 3,38,191 public chargers in place. This was triple the numbers recorded in 2018 and about 1.75 times that in 2020. EVs themselves have grown by more than five and half times between 2018 and 2021 from 0.7 million to 3.8 million.

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Offshore Wind Strategy in EU

Offshore Wind Strategy in EU

June 24, 2022 | , ,

In November 2020, the European Commission presented an EU-wide strategy for offshore wind. The strategy includes both the Commission’s vision and targets for offshore wind in Europe, as well as non- binding guidance for European member states on how to reach their individual national goals and contribute to achieving the EU ́s overarching targets for the uptake of offshore wind. The strategy defines a non-binding volume target of 300 GW by 2050, with a subtarget of 60 GW by 2030 for the whole of the EU.

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The European power sector in 2020: renewables overtake fossil fuels

The European power sector in 2020: renewables overtake fossil fuels

January 27, 2021 | , ,

Renewables overtook fossil fuels to become the EU’s main source of electricity for the first time in 2020.This is an important milestone in Europe’s clean energy transition. At a country level, Germany and Spain (and separately the UK) also achieved this milestone for the first time. The transition from coal to clean is, however, still too slow for reaching 55% greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. While Covid 19 had an impact in all countries, its impact on the overall trend from fossil fuels to renewables was quite limited. The rise in renewables was reassuringly robust despite the pandemic, and the fall in fossil-fired electricity could have been even more dramatic, had it not been for such a bounce-back in electricity demand and the worst year on record for nuclear generation.

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