Malta with the EU’s lowest renewable energy share

Malta registered the lowest levels of electricity generation from renewable sources in the whole of the European Union in 2016, a new report from published by the EU’s statistics body Eurostat shows.

Indeed, the report found that only 6% of the electricity generated by Malta came from renewable sources; a figure which was the lowest out of all EU Member States. Joining Malta at the bottom of this ranking were Luxembourg and Hungary (both 7%) and the EU’s other Mediterranean island nation, Cyprus (9%).

The figure, whilst low, is a minor improvement over the same statistic in 2015. In 2015, Malta was still the lowest in renewable electricity generation, with that amount standing at just 5% of the total electricity consumption.

The share of renewables in gross final consumption of energy remains one of the headline indicators of the Europe 2020 strategy. That strategy set a target for each EU country to reach in terms of renewable energy by 2020, with Malta’s target being that of 10% of the total electricity consumption.

Conversely, there were five countries where more than half of the electricity consumed in 2016 was generated from renewable sources. Austria registered the highest such level with 73%, followed by Sweden on 65%, Portugal and Denmark both on 54%, and Latvia on 51%.

The EU average for electricity generation from renewable sources meanwhile stood at 30% of the total gross consumption in 2016. This is a huge leap from the previous report into this statistic, which found that that EU average in 2015 was of 16.7%. This means that from 2015 to 2016, the average had practically doubled. For further context, the first Eurostat study into this field was in 2004 and it calculated that the EU average for electricity generation from renewable sources was 8.5% of the total gross consumption in that year.

Whilst Malta’s target stood at 10%, the target for the whole of the EU as per that Union’s renewable energy directive was of 20% of the total gross consumption by 2020. A further target of 27% was then set for 2030, but on 14 June 2018 the Commission, the Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement which included a binding renewable energy target for the EU for 2030 of 32%, with a clause for an upwards revision by 2023.

Eurostat also found that hydro power was the preferred renewable source, taking up 36.9% of the share of all renewable energy sources. This was closely followed by wind power, which had a 31.8% share, and then solar power, which made up 11.6% of the renewable sources.

The remaining 19.7% are made up of various other renewable sources for generation electricity such as wood, biogas, renewable waste and geothermal energy, the report said.