Technical assistance in realisation of the 5th report on progress of renewable energy in the EU final update report. Task 1 & 2

Abstract

At an EU-level, the shares of renewable energy sources (RES) in total, electricity (RES-E), heating and cooling (RES-H&C), and to a lesser extent also transport (RES-T) have been continuously increasing over the past years. In 2019, the EU reached a share of 18.9% of RES in gross final energy consumption, the target for 2020 being 20% as defined in the RES Directive 2009/28/EC (RED). Regarding the indicative trajectory set in the RES Directive, defined as the average values of 2011/2012, 2013/2014, 2015/2016, 2017/2018 and 2019/2020, respectively, the EU-28 has been comfortably above up to 2018 and the overall RES share in 2019 stays between the indicative RES Directive trajectories set for 2017/2018 and 2019/2020. However, the EU as a whole was slightly below the aggregated more ambitious trajectory defined by the MS themselves in their NREAPs in 2018 (by 0.1%). In 2019, the difference between the actual deployment and planned NREAP trajectory increased to 0.4%. With regard to individual sectors, the RES-E and the RES-H&C sectors are well on track, resulting from the especially high contributions on the “higher than planned” generation of RES-E from photovoltaics and use of heat pumps in the RES-H&C sector. Meanwhile, the RES-T sector stays below the planned share (8.9% actual versus 9.04% planned) resulting from the “lower than planned” RES consumption for all energy sources.