Energy News Monitoring

Aenert news. Energy Market & Energy Statistics
Eurostat provided recent statistics on the share of energy from renewable sources overall and in three consumption sectors (electricity, heating and cooling, and transport) in the EU.

These statistics are based on complete data for the year 2021, comparing them with figures dating back to 2004.

In 2021, the share of gross final energy consumption from renewable energy sources at the EU level was 21.8%, which is 0.3% lower than in 2020. The decrease, although not significant, is noteworthy because it is the first decrease ever recorded. In addition, this figure is 14% well below the EU's 2030 target of 32%.



Sweden still has the highest share of energy from renewable sources in 2021, at 62.6%.  This figure is based mainly on a combination of biomass, hydropower, wind, heat pumps, and liquid biofuels. Finland (43.1%) and Latvia (42.1%) achieved similar results, followed by Estonia (37.6%), Austria (36.4%) and Denmark (34.7%).

15 of the 27 EU members reported shares below the EU‘s  average of 21.8% in 2021: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia.

Luxembourg (11.7%), Malta (12.2%), the Netherlands (12.3%) and Ireland (12.5%) had the lowest share of renewables.

Electricity

Eurostat has revealed that wind and water provide most renewable electricity while solar is the fastest-growing energy source, rising from 7.4 TWh in 2008 to 163.8 TWh in 2021.  

In 2021, renewables accounted for 37.5% of electricity consumption in the EU (37.4% in 2020), of which wind accounts for 37.5%, hydropower – 32.1%, solar energy – 15.1%, solid biofuels – 7.4%, other renewable sources – 7.9%. The table below shows the breakdown by country.

Austria is the European Union leader in electricity consumption from renewable sources - 76.2%. With more than half of its electricity from renewables, Sweden (75.7%), Denmark (62.6%), Portugal (58.4%), Croatia (53.5%), and Latvia (51.4%) are also doing well.



Heating and Cooling

In 2021, renewables accounted for over one fifth of energy used for heating and cooling – 22.9% compared to 11.7% in 2004. In Sweden (68.6 %), Estonia (61.3 %), Latvia (57.4 %) and Finland (52.6 %) the share of renewable energy in heating and cooling exceeded half. The EU member states with less than 10% share of renewables in heating and cooling are Ireland (5.2 %), the Netherlands (7.7 %) and Belgium (9.2 %).

Transport



The use of renewable sources in transport has dropped to 9.1% in 2021 – 1.2% less compared to the previous year, and 4.9% below the 2030 target. As can be seen from the figure below, the countries with the highest share of renewable sources in transport are Sweden (30.4%) and Finland (20.5%). At the other side of the scale, with the lowest shares are Ireland and Greece (both 4.3%), Poland (5.7%), and Hungary (6.2%).

By the Editorial Board