RES Scenario in the European Union - The Sustainability of Renewable Energy in Europe - page 31

Chapter 2
RES Scenario in the European Union

The evolution of energy consumption in Europe is going through a profound change
in recent years: the incidence of traditional fuels is diminishing gradually in the
face of an increase in renewable energy sources (RES). In 2013, the consumption of
electricity from RES amounts to 14 % of the total with respect to 6 % in 1997. This
chapter provides a quantitative analysis of RES in the EU and the prospect of de-
velopment of RES under different scenarios. The analysis begins with a description
of the technical characteristics of RES and the quantity produced by each source
at world level. In Sect. 2.2, the distribution of the three major RES that are wind,
solar and biomass throughout the EU context is analyzed. Section 2.3 provides an
analysis of the development of RES in the coming years by different scenarios, both
according to the 2014 edition of future scenarios of the International Energy Agency
(IEA 2014a ) in the World Energy Outlook-2014 (WEO-2014) and the current EU
climate and energy package. Conclusions are drawn in Sect.clus.

2.1 Power Generation from RES

In recent years, especially after repeated threats that affect the environment, RES
have acquired significant positions in public opinion and among energy experts.
This is because they have as main characteristic the renewability, i.e., the ability to
provide energy without exhausting over time. In fact, RES are one of the engines of
sustainable development because they do not affect the storage of energy resources
and allow to produce cleaner energy. RES have a huge amount of advantages that af-
fect political, economic, and ethical issues. Their use involves a reduction in green-
house gas (GHG) emissions, greater security supply of primary energy sources, the
stabilization of energy costs in the long run since RES have raw material costs in
only a few cases (e.g., biomass), high conversion efficiency (thermal and electric)
due to technological innovations. Next to the great advantage of producing cleaner
energy, RES also show some drawbacks. The production of RES is intermittent in
time due to variability in daily, seasonal, climatic conditions of the primary source
and there are high investment costs. Systems of the various RES require very large