Renewable Energy in Europe

How realistic are Europe’s renewable-energy goals?

The European Union announced ambitious clean-energy targets as part of the big climate-change package unveiled this week: It wants 20% of total energy consumed by the 27-nation bloc to come from renewable sources by 2020. That’s up from 8.5% today — in a continent that’s already worked for decades to make clean energy viable. It won’t be easy.

The EU proposal tackles total energy consumption, including the transport sector, and includes an EU-wide biofuels target of 10% to trim oil consumption. We can leave aside internal European debates on the environmental merits of biofuels, or tax policy which has kneecapped part of the sector, or biofuels economics at a time of costlier feedstocks.

Walchensee hydroelectric plant (E.On)

Let’s look just at electricity generation, which is where renewables like hydro, wind, and solar really come into play.

The first problem: Europe’s electricity markets aren’t standing still. Demand is still growing, and new capacity is being added, usually through natural-gas fired turbines. So renewable energy has to run just to stay in place — let alone gain ground.

Second problem: Renewables punch below their weight, basically because they don’t generate juice all the time, as nuclear and even coal-fired plants do.

According to the EU statistical pocketbook, the 27 members of the Union had a total installed generation capacity of about 741 gigawatts in 2005. Renewables—including wind, geothermal, and hydropower—made up 24% of the total. Now look at actual electricity production. Those same 27 countries generated about 3,309 terawatt hours. Of that, renewables made up 14%. Less bang for the buck.

Third problem: hydro is renewable energy with a past and a present. But hydro isn’t a growth sector. How important is hydro now? It makes up 18.8% of the EU’s installed capacity, just nipping nuclear. Wind and geothermal make up 5.3% of capacity and 2% of electricity produced. (For all the sunny talk, solar power’s contribution is too small to register in the stats.) So the biggest stress going forward is going to be on the most marginal of Europe’s generation technologies.

Which also still need—despite huge technological advances and rising fossil-fuel prices — government subsidies to be cost-competitive with traditional generation sources. Granted, Europe is trying to address that: If coal and natural gas plants have to really pay for the CO2 they emit, as they will under the stricter carbon-emissions rules for 2013, then the economics of renewable energy get a lot more appealing.

Energy blog readers: Can Europe meet its green-energy goals?

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