Four European countries—Sweden, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Lithuania—have already met or exceeded their renewable energy targets for 2020, according to an annual renewables report released last week by the Eurostat data repository.
“Italy and Romania are within a fraction of a percent of reaching their targets as well,” Climate Central reports. “And though they aren’t close to their goal yet, Austria, Finland, and Latvia all generate a third or more of their electricity using renewables.”
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The report notes that the UK, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands—four countries that account for 30% of the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions—“are well behind their renewables targets,” Kahn writes. But “the EU as a whole is still in pretty good shape. The 2013 data show the region gets 15% of its energy from renewable sources, well within striking distance of the goal of 20% by 2020.”
The EU’s cap and trade system generated $4 billion in clean energy and climate-related investments in 2013.
