Solar and wind surpass fossil fuels to provide 30% of EU's electricity

Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels in the EU’s power generation last year, a report has found, in a “major tipping point” for clean energy.

- Ajit Niranjan

Turbines spinning in the wind and photovoltaic panels lit up by the sun generated 30% of the EU’s electricity in 2025, according to an annual review. Power plants burning coal, oil and gas generated 29%.

Beatrice Petrovich, an analyst at the Ember thinktank and the lead author of the report, said it was a “major tipping point” that was of strategic importance to the EU, which has grown increasingly anxious about its reliance on other countries for energy.

“The importance of this goes beyond the power sector,” she said. “The danger of relying on fossil fuels looms large in destabilised geopolitics.”

Europe faces growing tensions with the US - its main supplier of liquefied natural gas - over Donald Trump’s desire to take over Greenland. At the summit in Davos on Tuesday, the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, criticised Europe’s adoption of solar and wind, arguing that its lack of domestic battery factories risked making it “subservient” to China.