The European Union, with an initial provisional agreement, has decided to raise climate ambitionraising the target of the share of energy covered by renewables, from 32% to 42% or more by 2030.
The provisional agreement was taken with a view to giving Europe one more solid foundation over the next 7 years to reduce emissions and climate impact, and to increase their own independence from fossil fuels of Russia, independence that the EU wants to achieve by 2027.
The negotiators of the European Parliament have indeed reached an agreement to bring the share of energy from renewables from 32% to 42.5%, with a potential achievement of 45%. The agreement, before becoming law, will have to be approved by the European Parliament and by EU countries.
Europe must accelerate the pace on renewables
It’s quite a leap forward, considering that at the moment Europe’s share of renewable energy is 22% (data from 2021). This basically means a doubling of renewable quotas, with objectives which, even at the level of the individual countries of the bloc, could therefore become much more ambitious. Sweden today leads with 63% of renewable energy, while there are countries like Luxembourg, Malta, Ireland and the Netherlands where renewables cover only 13% of the total energy used. In Italy, renewables cover 31% of the national electricity requirement.
Therefore, the effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels will clearly also serve to reduce emissions, a climate objective that the European Union has set with a 55% cut by 2030. The European objectives of the package Fit-for-55, as Terna reminds us, provide that the energy produced from Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Italy will cover at least 65% of final consumption in the electricity sector by 2030 (compared to the 55% previously considered by the PNIEC). According to the scenarios proposed by Terna, the contribution of will be fundamental large-scale ground-mounted photovoltaics. The areas that will probably host more plants, due to a greater producibility of both wind and photovoltaic plants, will be Southern Italy and the Islands.
