BRUSSELS DOUBTS THAT SPAIN WILL REACH THE 2020 GOAL IN RENEWABLE

Spain and the rest of the countries of the European Union "are not following" the 2020 objectives in terms of renewable energy, the Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy of the European Union, Miguel Arias Cañete, warned this Monday.
The European Commission has recently published its fourth report on the Energy Union, in which it evaluates the progress of the community bloc in aspects such as emissions reduction, energy efficiency or renewables and in which it doubts that Spain and six other club countries manage to achieve their clean energy goal for 2020.
Together with Spain, the Executive sees with “some uncertainty” the possibility that Austria, Germany, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia will be able to reach their national goals. In the case of Spain, the objective is for energy from renewable sources to represent at least 20% of final energy consumption at the end of this decade, the same goal as for the EU as a whole.
The report highlights that in 2017 eleven Member States had already managed to exceed their national objectives (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Finland and Sweden). As a whole, Brussels has highlighted the “strong growth” of renewable energies – reaching 17.5% in 2017 – although it has developed in an “uneven” way, with a penetration of almost 31% in the electricity sector, but “only” 19.5% in heating and cooling and 7.6% in transportation.
In any case, the document warns that the rate of increase in the share of renewables has slowed down since 2014 and, although the EU is “on track” to meet its objectives for 2020, it is necessary to “accelerate efforts” to guarantee the compliance with the 2030 goal, set in 32%.
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