By Paul Homewood

A puff piece for renewables in Euro News:

Renewable energy consumed in the EU keeps growing, but not as fast as it should to meet 2030 targets.

Renewable energy made up 24.5% of EU energy use last year, a new record, but still far from the target set for 2030.

Spain is the only country among the bloc’s four largest economies to stand above EU average.

Among EU countries, Sweden used the most energy coming from renewables. Its main sources were solid biofuels, hydropower and wind.

Neighbouring Finland is second, with 50.8% of its energy coming from renewables, followed by another nordic country, Denmark, with 44.9%

The 2023 result is a new EU record, up 7% compared to 10 years ago – but it remains 18 points shy of the 42.5% target set for 2030.

Reaching that goal requires an annual growth of 2.6%, while the average year-on-year increase in the last decade has only been 0.79%.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/26/a-quarter-of-eu-energy-comes-from-renewables-which-countries-use-the-most

The report excludes most of the data, thus missing the real story, which is that renewable energy is still no more than a side show in Europe.

For a start, their 24% renewables figure includes bio and hydro, that have always supplied significant amounts of energy, which have changed little over time. Take these out and and you are left with just 12% coming from wind and solar in 2023.

(For clarification, Euro News are referring to 2023, when they say “last year”. The article is originally dated Dec 2024, though updated since. The figures below are from the BP Review and are slightly different to those claimed in the article)

BP Energy Review

Since 2010, wind and solar have increased from 1.62 to 6.80 exajoules:

But the most significant change has been a drop of 14% in total energy consumption, most of it since 2021. This has helped to push up the share of renewables, but is disastrous for the EU’s economy as a whole. As has often been argued, reduced energy consumption is a mark of economic decline, not a good thing.

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March 16, 2025 at 06:25AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Dennis Ambler

Sounds like Australia’s Labour have been telling the same porkies a Britain’s!

Jo Nova has the story:

As the Opposition point out the Labor government went to the last election telling us 97 times how they would make our electricity $275 cheaper, but with the latest rise, it’ll cost more like $1,300 more than it did before the Labor party were elected. Prices look set to rise about two or three times faster than inflation. But coming after big blockbuster rises two years in a row, even a 5 or 10% rise is nasty.

Full story here.

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March 16, 2025 at 04:51AM

California and the nation face the very real threat that zombie-like adherence to the EV mandate will collapse the electric grid.

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March 16, 2025 at 04:34AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratrby

An excellent piece in the Telegraph:

Taxes were pushed up too much in the Budget. Global stock markets have been rattled by Donald Trump. And business and consumer confidence has collapsed.

There were plenty of different factors that could explain the unexpected 0.1pc drop in Britain’s GDP reported on Friday. And yet, you hardly need to be Hercule Poirot to figure out who the real culprit is: the climate-obsessed Ed Miliband, our Energy Secretary.

The decline was led by a massive drop in manufacturing production. In reality, the collapse of Britain’s industrial base is turning into a national emergency – and Miliband has to go before he wipes it out completely.

According to Rachel Reeves, Donald Trump was to blame for the disappointing and unexpected fall in output reported this week. Without naming the US president directly, she argued that “the world has changed, and across the globe we are feeling the consequences” – as she attempted to deflect the blame away from the government she is a part of.

If she genuinely believes that, then Reeves is even more deluded and ignorant than even her most persistent critics realised. In reality, the person to blame sits around the cabinet table with her, not five thousand miles away in the Oval Office. It is her colleague Ed Miliband.

Read the full story here.

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March 16, 2025 at 04:12AM