Report: Two countries in Europe cover all electricity consumption with renewables

According to a new Global Wind Report, a total of seven countries around the world now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources. Two of them are in Europe.

Last year was the best year on record for new wind power installations. According to the latest Global Wind Report by the Global Wind Energy Council, reported by Euro News, 116 gigawatts of new wind power capacity were installed worldwide in 2023. That is 50% more than in 2022 and the largest year-on-year increase on record.

China leads in both onshore and offshore wind installations, followed by the USA, Brazil and Germany. Europe had a record year in 2023, thanks to strong growth in the Netherlands. A further 3.8 GW of new offshore wind capacity was added.

The report notes that although wind power growth is heavily concentrated in the countries mentioned above, other regions also saw increases. Africa and the Middle East, for example, installed almost 1 GW of wind capacity in 2023, three times as much as the previous year. However, the report’s authors warn that annual renewable energy additions must reach at least 320 GW by 2030 to meet the COP28 commitment to triple renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade.

According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), seven countries now generate all their electricity from renewable sources. More than 99.7% of electricity in Albania, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iceland, Nepal, Paraguay and the Democratic Republic of the Congo comes from geothermal, hydropower, solar or wind energy. Norway generates 98.38% of its electricity from wind, hydropower or solar. Another 40 countries generated at least half of their electricity from renewable sources in 2021 and 2022, including eleven European countries. Germany and Portugal, for example, can operate on 100% wind, hydropower and solar energy for short periods, according to the report.

Although many of these countries currently rely primarily on hydropower or wind energy, experts predict that solar power will be the priority in the near future. In 2023, solar power dominated renewable energy capacity expansion, accounting for 73% of the total increase, followed by wind power at 24%. Solar now accounts for 37 percent of total global renewable energy capacity.