In 2022, renewable energy sources (RES) made up 41.2% of gross electricity consumption in the EU, Eurostat said on Wednesday.
That was 3.4 percentage points more than in 2021 (37.8%) and well ahead of other electricity-generation sources such as nuclear (less than 22%), gas (less than 20%) or coal (less than 17%). In total, renewable energy sources increased by 5.7% from 2021 to 2022.
In Greece, the RES share in electricity consumption in 2022 exceeded the European Union average to reach nearly 43%.
Electricity from renewables dominates in Sweden, where the majority of its electricity consumption in 2022 came from renewable sources (83.3%, mostly hydro and wind) followed by Denmark (77.2%, mostly wind) and Austria (74.7%, mostly hydro). Shares above 50% were also registered in Portugal (61.0%), Croatia (55.5%), Latvia (53.3%) and Spain (50.9%).
At the other end of the scale, the lowest shares of electricity from renewable sources were reported in Malta (10.1%), Hungary (15.3%), Czechia (15.5%) and Luxembourg (15.9%).
Wind and hydropower accounted for over two-thirds of the total electricity generated from renewable sources (37.5% and 29.9%, respectively). The remaining one-third of electricity came from solar (18.2%), solid biofuels (6.9%) and other renewable sources (7.5%). Solar power is the fastest-growing source: in 2008 it only accounted for 1% of the electricity consumed in the EU.