European Countries Cut Tens of Billions of Euros of Fossil Fuel Imports from Wind & Solar Power Growth
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I wrote a handful of articles last month on the 75th edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy. There was one more thing in there that I wanted to cover, though. There’s a chart eleven pages in that shows how much money different countries have saved from switching to wind and solar power faster following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Well, you can see in the chart below how the report words it:
“Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the start of 2022, the European Union accelerated existing plans to scale up its renewable energy capacity. Since then, development has been rapid: wind and solar power made up 30% of electricity supply in 2025, compared to 19% in 2021. This has displaced both coal and gas power, with gas generation falling by 15% in the same period, and coal by 38%. The accelerated deployment of wind and solar, plus supportive policy environments such as REPowerEU, meant that by 2025 the two sources generated 852TWh, more power than coal, gas and oil combined (760TWh),” the report adds.
That’s a dramatic drop in coal and gas power, and rise in wind and solar. (More is needed in reality, as the EU is still too dependent on hostile foreign nations, Russia and the US most notably, but that doesn’t mean that this hasn’t been a significant, quick shift in power supply.)
“The rapid build-out has shielded the region from paying additional costs for imported fossil fuels. Ember analysis has found that new wind and solar capacity deployed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine avoided €72bn of fossil fuel imports between 2022 and 2025, with the largest savings coming from Germany, Spain and Italy. The majority of this saving has come through avoided gas imports.”
Kudos to the European Union. Now keep up the good work and install more wind and solar power!
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