Out of puff - how pumping up renewable electricity lets the air out of renewable energy

The EU recently published its annual update on renewable energy. As usual, the UK is near the bottom of the league table, despite the massive public expenditure on renewable electricity. France and the Netherlands were singled out as particularly bad performers. But, given all the propaganda about how successful they are, you might be surprised to see Germany also languishing in the bottom half of the league.

What binds many of the countries that have been striving without much success to increase their share of renewable energy is that they have focused on renewable electricity. As electricity typically constitutes only around 20% of final energy consumption, it is remarkably difficult to have much impact if one focuses one's efforts on this sector.

We wanted to see if there was a statistical connection between the emphasis placed on the three sectors (heat, transport and electricity) and the overall performance. So we worked out the proportion of the overall increase in renewable electricity that was attributable to each of these sectors, and compared those proportions with the overall increase in renewables across all sectors.

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Theoretically, if it were as easy to deliver renewables in one sector as another, and the choices came down mainly to the different national circumstances, then there should be no correlation between the shares in the overall growth, and the scale of that growth. This is how the relationship looks for transport:

There is a material negative correlation. In other words, the more emphasis that national governments placed on transport within their overall renewables policies, the less successful they were at increasing the total contribution from renewable energy.

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For electricity, the picture is similar:

The more that national governments relied on renewable electricity to meet the overall commitments, the less successful were they in meeting those commitments.

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Only for Heating & Cooling is the relationship positive:

Countries that placed the most emphasis on renewable heat within their portfolio made the best progress in their overall delivery of renewable energy. 

Many of the countries that are seen as leading promoters of renewable energy, such as Germany, the UK and Spain, have actually favoured winner-picking in the renewable-electricity sector. Consequently, they have achieved less bang for their buck than countries that have placed more emphasis on decarbonising the heat sector.

There is a difference between effort and cost on one side, and delivery on the other. Policy-makers and journalists tend to focus on the amount of money that is spent, as though being ineffective is somehow virtuous. What really matters is delivering as much renewable energy and carbon reductions for as little money as possible. The spendthrift nations like Germany, the UK and Spain have been all huff and very little puff.