The sun accounted for one-tenth of the EU's energy consumption during June and July. This is shown in a survey where the 27 member states of the EU together generated 39 TwH of solar electricity, which is a record figure. This is to be compared with 28 TwH during the corresponding period in 2018. This is according to Reuters in an article, referring to a report by the climate organization Ember.
The Netherlands, Germany and Spain are the top countries in the report. In both the Netherlands and Germany, 17 percent of energy production comes from solar electricity, and the majority of EU countries account for enormous increases compared to the 2018 report.
A collective increase
Most countries have individually broken their own record figures, according to Ember's report. The Netherlands' and Spain's solar electricity production has doubled, but it is Hungary that has taken the biggest steps with a quadrupling of the share of solar electricity. They have gone from three percent in 2018 to almost 12 percent in 2021, and thus solar power has taken over from coal power as the largest energy source. Estonia has also taken steps into sustainable electricity production, from a figure close to zero in 2018 to having risen to almost ten percent. The only country that has taken a notable step backwards is Belgium, which reports a decrease in the share of solar electricity by just over one percent.
Sweden has not reported statistics in time to be able to participate in the report and Austria was excluded due to unreliable data.
Positive figures - but must be even better
However, the increases are not enough to reach the 2030 climate goals. Currently, solar power in the EU is increasing by an average of 14 TwH per full year, which is a figure that must be doubled to 30 TwH per year to reach the targets. In addition, coal power is still the leading energy source overall with 14 percent of electricity production in the EU. What speaks for a rapid development of solar electricity is the price drop: in ten years, the price of solar electricity has gone from 381 US dollars per mWh in 2010 to as low as 57 dollars per mWh in 2020. According to the report, this is half the price of fossil fuels from existing plants in several major EU countries, such as Germany, Great Britain, Italy, France and Spain.
