Power-sector emissions have fallen by 20% across the EU since the last European parliamentary election in 2019, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Between 6-9 June, around 360 million people across the EU will vote for representatives from national parties to sit in the European Parliament.
The grouping or coalition with the most seats will help to shape the leadership of the next European Commission. The overall composition of parliament will also influence the bloc’s priorities between 2024-2029.
Climate change and energy once again feature prominently in the manifestos of the major parties, with mounting pressure to secure energy supplies in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drawing particular focus.
Core to this is a transition to decarbonised domestic energy. Carbon Brief’s analysis shows that the relatively small nations of Portugal, Latvia and Finland have led the way since the last EU election, with the largest percentage drop in power-sector emissions between 2019 and 2023.
Malta and the Netherlands have led in increasing their renewables shares, with the Netherlands also seeing the largest absolute increase in renewable generation.
Meanwhile, fossil-fuel generation fell in all but three countries when comparing 2019 and 2023.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- All national power systems across the EU are cleaner than in 2019, with EU renewables share increasing from 34% in 2019 to 44% in 2023.
- Germany saw the largest fall in power-sector emissions in absolute terms since the last EU emissions.
- There were just three EU countries where fossil fuel use has increased since 2019 – Malta, Croatia and Lithuania.
- The Czech Republic remains the biggest per-capita emitter in the EU, but per-capita emissions fell in all but three countries.
- Overall, all of the EU’s power systems have become cleaner since 2019, with the most carbon-intensive grid (Poland) making the fourth most progress in absolute terms.
- Malta and the Netherlands have increased their renewables share by more than 150% relative to 2019.
- Spain added the most solar generation in absolute terms. Poland increased its solar generation by more than 1,500%, increasing generation by 12TWh.
In this analysis, Carbon Brief looks at how the electricity sector has changed since the last election.
All of the EU’s power systems cleaner than 2019
Every national power system across the EU has become cleaner since the last European Parliamentary election in 2019, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Finland led the way in terms of reducing grid intensity – the measure of how clean the electricity within national grids is – halving its intensity between 2019 and 2023 to become the third cleanest in the EU, behind France and Sweden.
In absolute terms, Greece reduced its grid intensity the most since 2019, Carbon Brief shows. The country hit a new record high level of clean energy generation, with power grid operator IPTO announcing that renewables and hydroelectric plants accounted for 57% of the country’ energy in 2023.
Germany saw the largest fall in power-sector emissions in absolute terms – namely, the overall volume of CO2 emissions produced. Like Greece, the country had a “landmark” 2023 for renewable generation, according to thinktank Ember.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that power-sector emissions in Germany fell by 43.23m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2), or 18.4%, of 2019 values by 2023.
Despite this significant drop, the country’s power sector is still the most polluting of all EU countries, responsible for 29.3% of EU power-sector emissions. This places it far ahead of Poland, the second largest polluter, which is responsible for 17% of emissions.
Germany has one of the largest populations in Europe and its energy demand sits at 514TWh (19% of EU total). When looking at per-capita emissions (as shown below), the country sits fourth in the EU for emissions, seeing a reduction of 0.51tCO2 in 2023 compared with 2019.
Portugal, Latvia and Finland decarbonised their power sectors the most relative to 2019, analysis shows.
Portugal saw renewables supply 61% of its electricity consumption in 2023, according to the country’s grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais. This totaled 31.2TWh – the most it has ever recorded. This included a period in November where the country ran on just renewables for six days in a row.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of Ember data placed the 2023 figure even high, with 73% of electricity from renewable sources.
As shown in the chart below, there were just three EU countries where power-sector emissions have increased since 2019 – Malta, Croatia and Lithuania. These countries are some of the smallest in Europe, collectively accounting for less than 1% of total EU power generation in 2023.
Malta increased its power-sector emissions by 0.11MtCO2, or 10.3%, of 2019 emissions. As an island nation, Malta’s energy system is still heavily dominated by imported oil and gas, making up nearly 90% of power generation. (Malta has some of the lowest per-capita emissions in Europe, with 5.3 tonnes CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per inhabitant in 2019, well below the EU average of 8.4tCO2e.)
Croatia, where emissions increased by 0.4MtCO2 or 13%, is similarly reliant on fossil fuels, with coal still dominating its power sector. While power demand has remained stable in recent years, net imports of electricity have dropped likely due to higher electricity prices in neighbouring countries.
Although renewable generation offset most of this, it did lead to a small jump in fossil fuel use of ~1TWh.
Lithuania saw emissions increase by 0.32MtCO2, from 0.57MtCO2 in 2019 to 0.89MtCO2 in 2023, Carbon Brief analysis shows. The country is currently heavily reliant on electricity imports, after the closure of its only nuclear power plant in 2010 changed it from a net exporter to a net importer.
Chris Rosslowe, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember, tells Carbon Brief:
“Trends in generation in Lithuania don’t tell you as much as in other countries as it imports most of its electricity since shutting down nuclear power in 2010. Import dependence is slowly lowering though – from ~75% in 2019 to ~55% in 2023 – and, like Croatia, renewables are growing faster than fossils.”
It is undergoing a particularly key period of transition. Lithuania’s electricity grid currently operates synchronously with the Russia-Belarus power system, but it is planning to de-synch by 2025 and instead run with the continental Europe grid.
Additionally, it is among the countries that are seeing the fastest expansion of wind generation. It is also targeting halving its imports and generating 70% of its electricity from domestic sources by 2030, as it pushes for increased energy sovereignty and security.
Rosselowe notes that Malta, Croatia and Lithuania are all expected to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels in the coming years, offset in large part by growing renewables.
Overall, the Czech Republic remains the biggest per-capita emitter in the EU, as shown in the chart below. Between 2019 and 2023, emissions in the country did drop from 4tCO2 to 3.2tCO2, but it still sits 0.9tCO2 above the second highest per-capita emitter Cyprus (3.1tCO2).
The three countries that saw an increase in per-capita emissions match those where there was an increase in fossil fuel generation – Malta, Croatia and Lithuania.
Renewable generation grows in all but one country
Between 2019 and 2023, the share of renewable generation in the EU increased in all by one country, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Italy saw renewable generation fall from 115.83 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2019 to 114.8TWh in 2023. This was broadly due to the impact of droughts in the country affecting hydropower generation, which hit in 2022, but had a continued impact in 2023.
This was a wider dynamic seen globally, which kept the world from hitting peak electricity generation emissions in 2023.
Slovakia, meanwhile, was the only country to see a dip in its share of renewable energy when comparing 2019 and 2023. This was minor, falling just 0.65% from 23.57% to 22.92%. The country has one of the smallest energy demands in Europe and, like Italy, saw a drop in hydro driven by droughts in 2022.
Malta and the Netherlands saw their share of renewables increase by more than 150% in 2023 relative to 2019, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
The Netherlands increased its absolute share of renewable generation by close to 30% since 2019, as shown in the chart below. The country seeing the largest absolute increase in renewable generation, closely followed by Spain.
Nearly half the electricity produced in the Netherlands is now renewable, according to the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics.
This was predominantly wind generation, with the country adding more wind power than any other country in the EU between 2019 and 2023, both relatively and in absolute terms. Overall, the Netherlands increased its wind generation by 152% and Finland followed closely behind with a 143% rise.
Latvia, similarly, saw significant growth, with the share of renewables jumping from 49.5% in 2019 to 76.6% in 2023. This 27.1% increase is particularly key for the country, as it continues to target reducing its dependence on energy imports from Russia.
Spain added more solar generation in absolute terms over the four-year period than any other country in the EU, tripling its overall renewable generation.
Poland increased its solar generation by more than 1,500%, increasing generation by 12TWh albeit from a low starting point of just 0.71TWh in 2019. Renewables generated a record 26% of electricity in the country in 2023. However, coal still produces most of the country’s electricity and continues to have a powerful impact on policy due to powerful lobbies.
Hungary has increased its solar share of generation the most since 2019, with an increase of 14%. It was followed closely by the Netherlands, with a 12.8% increase. Luxembourg increased wind power share of generation by more than the Netherlands – 17%.
Just three EU countries see fossil fuel generation increase
Overall, just three EU countries – Malta, Croatia and Lithuania – saw an increase in the share of fossil fuel generation in 2023 relative to 2019, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Over the same period, Luxembourg and Finland reduced fossil generation by more than 60%.
The Netherlands has reduced its fossil fuel share in the electricity system the most since 2019, falling by close to 30%. As shown in the chart below, this fall was mirrored by a significant increase in renewable energy generation.
In comparison with 2019, Ireland saw an increase in coal generation in 2023 making it the only EU nation to do so. In 2019, coal generation was at a record low in the country (0.51TWh) before jumping to 2.72TWh in 2022 due to a drop in wind generation.
However, since that point coal power generation has been continuing to fall again, in line with the wider trend seen over the past few decades.
Ireland has seen total electricity demand increase by more than 60% since 2019, Carbon Brief analysis shows. The country’s energy demand has been particularly driven by the growth of data centres, which accounted for 18% of energy demand in 2022, for example.
Despite the blip in coal generation, the share of fossil fuels fell by 2.5% between 2019 and 2023.
Portugal reduced its use of coal the most, relative to 2019, while Germany reduced the most in absolute terms. As discussed above, this was supported by surging renewable generation in both countries.
Pieter de Pous, programme lead in E3G’s fossil fuel transition programme, tells Carbon Brief:
“Europe’s phaseout of coal has been one of its biggest, most historical, monumental success stories of the last couple of years when you think about it. We’ve dropped consumption since 2016 by 50%, right? It’s really enormous and it’s a story that’s rarely told.”
The last European Parliament elections saw a “green wave” of climate-focused politicians winning seats across the continent. In the years that followed, the EU approved a European Green Deal, including goals to cut emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050.
European member states now have a “critical role” to play in implementing what has been agreed, notes Rosslowe. He adds:
“The next legislative agenda is likely to be built around themes of security and competitiveness. The first main task regarding energy and climate for the new parliament will be to appoint a team of commissioners who will tackle these – and any other new policy priorities – in a way that complements rather than competes with the objectives of the Green Deal.”
The post Analysis: European power-sector emissions fall by 20% since last EU election appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: European power-sector emissions fall by 20% since last EU election
Claver Gatete is Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Jason Veysey is Energy Modeling Program Director and Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Lisa Sachs is Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.
The case for global energy transition has rarely been clearer. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year exposed the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems, while the falling cost of renewables, the rising penetration of electric vehicles, and the growing value of demand flexibility have made the direction of travel obvious. The benefits of a clean, secure, integrated system are no longer in dispute. What remains unclear is how to build it.
Countries around the world have called for faster renewable energy deployment and alternative energy arrangements. A secure, affordable, resilient, decarbonised system requires specific investments in specific places in a specific sequence, optimised across sectors and borders. But very few governments have the analytical foundation to translate those imperatives into investment.
The two instruments that are supposed to determine investment priorities for decarbonisation – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and country platforms – cannot answer the most basic question facing any country undertaking an energy transition: what should the energy system look like?
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To close this gap, every country needs a bankable, economy-wide optimisation model for its energy system. A model is not a plan, but it can help answer the critical question of what the future energy system should look like. It shows how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, calculates investment requirements and sequencing, and quantifies how system costs are affected by assumptions, policies, and exogenous variables like trade policy and financing terms.
Tool for efficient investment
Optimisation is a simplified way of simulating an energy system, but it can be an extremely powerful tool for moving energy planning from reactive (how do we manage the disparate actions in the energy system?) to intentional (what energy system underpins our national objectives?). A model can show how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, and how investment requirements are quantified and sequenced.
Optimisation models can treat the energy system and the sectors it serves as an integrated whole, optimising across sectors and projects in ways that can be mutually reinforcing. If considered independently, growth in industrial demand, transport electrification, and digital infrastructure can add stress to the energy system. But an optimised plan can arrange these and other changes in an efficient, synergistic way.
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New load can be added where low-cost power is available; industrial customers can ensure the viability of investments in energy supply; electric vehicle charging policy can smooth load curves and reduce costs for all consumers.
Additionally, optimisation modeling can also change the financeability of investments. Taken alone, each project faces uncertainty about the rest of the system, which raises the cost of capital and causes projects to stall or unwind after contracts are signed. A coherent, optimised plan makes visible the coordination that private capital would otherwise have to bet on: identified offtake, sequenced and committed transmission, contracted power supply, and so on.
What COP31 and COP32 should do
The upcoming COPs in Turkey and Ethiopia can shift the center of gravity of international climate cooperation from fragmented commitments to planning. Three moves are urgently needed.
First, optimised, economy-wide, long-term energy system planning must be the foundation on which any meaningful NDC, country platform, or finance commitment rests. NDCs are typically drafted by environment or single-line ministries, with limited cross-sectoral input from ministries of energy, finance, and planning. They contain targets, derived from sectoral strategies or national commitments, not from an analytically grounded picture of what the energy system should look like and what investments would make it work. Country platforms are generally a portfolio of investments assembled from existing project pipelines, rather than derived from a system-level analysis of what an optimised, decarbonised energy system would require.
Second, recognise regions as a key planning unit. Modern integrated energy systems are inherently regional. Renewable endowments are unevenly distributed; balancing variable supply across borders lowers aggregate cost, reduces redundant backup capacity, and unlocks economies of scale no individual nation can achieve. Many energy investments in Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa and Central Asia may only be financeable in a regional context. Assessing domestic infrastructure without regional optimisation perpetuates the perception that decarbonisation is more expensive than it is.
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Third, finance the planning capacity. A coordinated commitment by multilateral development banks, bilateral donors, and philanthropic partners to help every region and its constituent countries develop and maintain their own modelling capability, with open-source tools and regional analytical hubs, would close the most consequential gap in the current architecture. The cost is small relative to current spending on country platforms, failed project preparation, and misallocated infrastructure investment.
This includes supporting regional institutions such as the ASEAN Centre for Energy, the African Energy Commission, regional power pools, and the Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization to determine what optimised regional systems require. Country-by-country pledging, repeated at every COP, will not deliver what meaningfully integrated systems can.
The 2026 energy crisis made the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems newly visible. That window of clarity will close. The international community should seize the moment to build the planning foundation that has been missing for thirty years, rather than commissioning another round of NDCs or pledges, striving for outcomes neither was designed to deliver.
The post Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition
The world is currently experiencing what is expected to become the strongest El Niño on record – dubbed a “super El Niño” by many.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.
This temporarily raises global temperatures and reshapes rainfall and extreme weather around the world – impacting the lives of billions of people.
The current El Niño event began in June and is expected to last into 2027.
El Niño is part of a wider climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
The ENSO cycle also has a cool phase, known as La Niña, as well as a “neutral” phase. El Niño and La Niña events typically last between nine and 12 months, but can go on longer.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how the ENSO cycle works, its impacts on extreme weather and global temperatures and why this El Niño event is projected to be the most intense since records began.
The post Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/el-nino-explainer/index.html
The second-largest reservoir in the US reached a record-low water height on Saturday – just days after the country’s largest reservoir broke its own record.
Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are located on the Colorado River.
They provide water for populations across seven US states in the south-western US, with around 40 million people getting some or all of their municipal water from the Colorado River.
The river also provides water for around 5.5m acres (22,258 square kilometres) of farmland across Colorado, Arizona, California and the other states in the river basin.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that climate change, population growth and over-consumption are all contributing to the current record-low levels of the reservoirs.
Record lows
At full capacity, Lakes Mead and Powell can hold a combined 68 cubic kilometres of water – enough to supply all household consumption in the contiguous US for nearly 1.5 years. However, the water level in both reservoirs has been declining for decades.
The chart below shows the water level of Lake Mead, in metres above mean sea level. The reservoir, which began to fill in 1935 following the construction of the Hoover Dam, has a “full pool” maximum capacity of 347.60 metres. The water level in Lake Mead reached a record low of 317.11 metres on 7 August.
The following chart shows the water level of Lake Powell, in metres above mean sea level. Lake Powell’s full-pool level is 1,127.76 metres.
While the reservoir reached its maximum capacity several times in the 1980s, it has not done so since. On 15 August, the water level in Lake Powell was recorded at a new record-low of 1,072.87 metres.
Both reservoirs have continued to decline in the days since breaking their respective records. The downward trend will largely continue in both lakes until next spring, when the snowpack in the mountains of the Upper Colorado River Basin begins to melt, says Dr Jack Schmidt, a senior research scientist at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The big dilemma of the moment is that we’re only in the middle of August, and we have no assurance of what the coming winter will be. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will be depleting overall total basin reservoir storage from now until, roughly, early April.”
Compounding factors
The record lows across the two reservoirs are the result of several compounding factors, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Since the turn of the 20th century, the amount of water flowing along the Upper Colorado River has declined by about 20%. Research suggests that half of this decline can be attributed to human-induced climate change.
Most of the river’s streamflow comes from the snowpack of the Upper Colorado River Basin, which stretches across five western US states but is primarily located in Colorado and Utah.
This region has been gripped by a historic “megadrought” for more than a quarter of a century. Nearly half of the megadrought’s intensity over 2000-18 is attributable to climate change, according to a 2020 study.
At the same time, the increasing population in the US south-west has put added pressure on the Colorado River’s water supply. The number of people obtaining some or all of their water from the Colorado system has grown by 15 million (around 60%) since 1992.
Schmidt tells Carbon Brief:
“There’s an ultimate cause of the present water crisis, and there’s a proximate cause. The ultimate cause is a warming climate, a warming planet and a pretty clear correlation between warming conditions and decreased runoff in the Colorado River Basin.
“The proximate cause is that in this messy democratic republic of ours, big policy decisions that match the variability of the climate occur painfully slowly – with intense political negotiations – and only incrementally.”
On 31 July, the US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the western US, released an environmental impact statement on its proposed post-2026 strategy for managing Lakes Powell and Mead. The strategy itself has not been released yet.
Schmidt notes that the statement does appear to give the Bureau flexibility to “respond to crisis” by reducing the delivery of water to several states. However, he adds:
“They acknowledge it won’t work if we just stay critically dry, and of course every climate model for the 21st century, especially with a continually warming planet, says that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The post Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels
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