Since the current European Commission took office in 2019, EU wind and solar capacity has grown by 65% (+188GW), displacing fossil fuel generation and driving down emissions, according to new analysis from Ember.
Wind capacity increased by 31% (+52 GW) to reach 219GW in 2023.
Solar capacity has surged even faster, more than doubling (+113%) from 120GW to 257GW, Ember found.
This new wind and solar capacity resulted in a 46% (+226 TWh) combined increase in generation from 2019 to 2023 and propelled wind and solar’s share in the EU electricity mix from 17% in 2019 to over a quarter in 2023 (27%).
This was the main driver behind the increase of the share of total renewables from 34% in 2019 to 44% in 2023, according to the analysis.
Fossil generation decreased by 22% (-247 TWh) over the same time period, with sharp falls in both coal and gas generation.
The increase in wind and solar generation (+226 TWh, +46%) was enough to displace a fifth of the EU’s fossil generation from 2019 to 2023.
Without the wind and solar growth, fossil generation would have fallen by a mere 1.9% (21 TWh) instead of a substantial 22%, as lower electricity demand was offset by the decrease in the generation from other clean sources, Ember said.
The largest wind and solar capacity additions came from Germany (+42 GW, +38%), which added 22% of new capacity to the EU total, and Spain (+25 GW, +69%), which contributed 13%.
Whilst these two countries led the way, strong progress was made across the region, Ember found.
More than half of the 27 Member States have at least doubled, and in many cases more than tripled, their wind and solar capacity from 2019 to 2023.
Together these 14 countries, which exclude Germany and Spain, have added 74GW of new wind and solar, representing 39% of the total EU capacity increase since 2019.
This includes countries with relatively limited installed capacity as of 2019, such as Slovenia, which added 800MW to reach 1GW in 2023.
But it also includes the bigger power system of the Netherlands, which added 23GW to triple its wind and solar capacity to reach 35GW in 2023.
There was also an acceleration in the transition to clean power in Central and Eastern Europe.
Hungary has added more than 4GW of new solar since 2019, increasing installed capacity by 4 times to reach 6GW in 2023.
Meanwhile, Poland has increased its wind and solar capacity by 3.4 times in these four years, adding 18GW or 9% of the total new capacity in the EU.
Of the 28 countries that installed 1GW or more of solar capacity in 2023, EU Member States accounted for thirteen – almost half.
Out of these 13 EU countries, only five were gigawatt-scale markets in 2019.
The EU electricity mix is among the cleanest in the world, significantly outperforming other major economies such as the US and China, Ember concluded.
The emission intensity of EU electricity generation was less than half the global average in 2019 at 287 gCO2 per kWh versus 501 gCO2 per kWh.
By 2023, the EU’s electricity had become even cleaner, cutting its emissions intensity by 15% from 2019 to 244 gCO2 per kWh.
This was a steeper decline than the global average, which only fell by 4% over the same period.