Study: Czechia still significantly lags EU in solar and wind energy use

Czechia continues to lag significantly behind most EU countries in the use of solar and wind energy. While electricity generation from solar and wind together accounted for 30 percent in the EU last year, surpassing fossil fuels for the first time, the share in Czechia was 6.6 percent. The pace of growth in solar’s share in Czechia has recently slowed, while the situation in wind power is even worse. This follows from an analysis by the Ember institute seen by ČTK.

Electricity generation from solar rose to 4.4 terawatt-hours (TWh) in Czechia last year, compared with 2.3 TWh in 2020. Although the share of photovoltaic plants in generation has more than doubled over the past five years to six percent last year, the pace of growth has recently been fading, according to the analysis.

"Although solar generation increased by around 0.8 TWh in 2025, the year-on-year increase in its share was lower than in 2024. This is worrying because Czechia still has considerable untapped solar potential and remains below the EU average in the use of renewable sources," said Tatiana Mindeková, an analyst at the Ember think tank.

Without restoring the pace of growth, there is a risk that progress to date will not lead to a deeper transformation of the energy mix, she said. "Czechia will remain behind developments in the EU in the energy transition," Mindeková warned.

Czechia lags even further behind in the use of wind energy. Its share of domestic generation has long stagnated at around one percent. The EU average, meanwhile, was nearly 17 percent last year.

The combination of wind and solar is highly effective, according to the analysis. "When winds were weak in spring 2025, solar power plants compensated for this – and the share of renewables in the EU remained stable. But Czechia does not have this safeguard. We only have photovoltaics, while wind power is stagnating here. Yet wind is precisely the key to cheaper electricity," said Jiří Beranovský of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT).

According to the analysis, the share of wind and solar power in Europe is steadily rising. For example, solar generation increased by more than a fifth for the fourth consecutive year. Photovoltaics generated a combined 13 percent of electricity in the EU last year. According to the study, they thus surpassed the shares of coal and hydropower. All EU countries recorded year-on-year growth in photovoltaic generation. Renewables overall accounted for 48 percent of generation. Coal use, by contrast, continued to decline, with its share falling below ten percent in 2025, its lowest level to date.