On 16/07/2020 9:37 pm, Stephen Loosley wrote: > ‘Renewables smash new record providing 40% of European electricity’ > > The ‘highest quarterly figure on record’ was achieved while the share of > fossil fuels dropped to 33%, according to a new report > > By Dimitris Mavrokefalidis Tuesday 14 July 2020 > https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/07/14/renewables-smash-new-record-providing-40-of-european-electricity/
The article didn't link to the actual report, which is the '2020 Q1' Electricity market report on https://ec.europa.eu/energy/data-analysis/market-analysis_en I went looking to see exactly what fuels they classified as 'renewable' and 'fossil'. Turns out they have three major groupings: Renewable: hydro, wind, solar, biomass Fossil: Solid (coals), Oil, Gas Nuclear: (neither renewable or fossil) Much of this changes in *percentages* were attributed to COVID-related demand reduction - less power was needed, and with high winds the generators cut back fossil burning. The highlight paragraph that these headline stats were extracted from reads for context: > Fossil fuels were caught in the pincer movement of falling demand and rising > renewables. Coal generation bore the brunt of the pressure, falling by 30% > year-on-year (-38 TWh). Gas was unable to capitalize on coal’s demise and > suffered > losses as well (-3 TWh). Coal-to-gas switching quickly gave way to a wide > grey-to-green shift. Thanks to recovering hydro output and record high wind > generation, renewable energy sources had a very successfulquarter, expanding > by 38 > TWh year-on-year and reaching a 40% share in the power mix, their highest > quarterly > figure to date. Not even nuclear energy was spared by the weakening demandand > rock-bottom wholesale prices.Reactors in Sweden, France and other countries > had to > be taken offline or significantly ramped down. All in all, renewable > generators were > the least affected by the crisis and came out of it relatively unscathed. It is important to note these percentages are not really comparable to Australia due to our lack of nuclear. A chart of French mix (Figure 17) shows they have negligible fossil generation anyway, more than 50% is nuclear. Also, Figure 28 (page 24 for those who care to look) compares Australian wholesale pricing with Japan, EU, US, Russia and Turkey. With these comparators, we in Australia aren't badly off, with wholesale power prices much the same as for the EU over the past 2.5 years, and decreasing. > > > Renewable energy broke another record for the European electricity mix in the > first quarter of 2020, reaching a 40% share, the highest quarterly figure on > record. > > That’s according to the latest quarterly report on European Electricity > Markets, which suggests renewables had a very successful quarter, expanding > by 38TWh year-on-year and becoming the least affected energy source by the > pandemic. > > At the same time, the electricity generated by fossil fuels fell from 38% in > the first quarter of 2019 to 33% during the same period this year, with coal > generation alone dropping to 30%. > > The European Commission’s report also estimates the shift away from fossil > fuels caused the carbon footprint of electricity generation in the member > states to decrease by 20%. > > It also notes demand for electric vehicles (EVs) continued to grow as new EV > registrations doubled and almost 25,000 new public charging points were added > in the first three months of 2020. > > Findings of the report also show electricity consumption in Europe declined > by approximately 3% year-on-year, a development which is mostly attributed to > warm winter conditions and restricted economic activity due to the Covid-19 > crisis. > _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
