BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 9. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts the EU’s additional growth of renewable electricity generation at up to 180 terawatt-hour from 2021-2023, Trend reports via the Renewable Energy Market Update 2022 from the IEA.
Meanwhile, according to the Agency’s estimations, about 100-200 terawatt-hour of the EU natural gas-based electricity is provided by Russia.
As the IEA explains, the countries of the EU vary in their dependency on Russia’s natural gas.
“Germany and Italy have the highest dependency on Russia in terms of absolute electricity generation. However, the potential for renewables to reduce dependency in Germany is significantly higher than in Italy based on our wind and solar expectations by 2023 – unless new and stronger policies are introduced and the pace of implementation picks up,” the research said.
At the same time, France and the Netherlands are weakly dependent on Russia, which paves the way for higher potential for renewables to substitute natural gas. In contrast, to those two countries, Austria, Hungary and Greece are limited in renewables expansion, which means that the dependency on Russia will remain.
“With current deployment trends, wind and solar PV expansion in the EU has the potential to reduce the dependence on Russian gas use in electricity significantly. However, the contribution of variable renewables will also depend on policies on energy efficiency measures keeping demand in check and the phase-out or phase- down policies for coal and nuclear energy in several member states,” the IEA said.