[LINK] Renewables providing 40% of European electricity’

[Paul Brooks]

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.
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