The business plans of major European power utilities don’t contain the necessary intermediate targets to deliver on their net zero pledges, a report by climate and energy think-tank Ember and Europe Beyond Coal found.
Examined against the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2050 net zero roadmap, not one of the analysed strategies of 21 Europe-base coal-burning utilities reaches all of the milestones on fossil fuel phase-out and accelerated deployment of renewables needed to reach the mid-century target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The utilities studied will comfortably quadruple solar and wind capacity from 88GW in 2020 to 428GW by 2030, but nevertheless fall short of the minimum six-fold global growth required, the report ‘Limited Utility The European energy companies failing on net zero commitments’ (link here) found.
“There’s growing consensus among governments of advanced economies that a clean electricity supply by 2035 is crucial to realising net zero emissions by 2050, but that’s not being reflected in the business plans of European utilities,” said Sarah Brown, lead author and senior energy and climate analyst at Ember.
“These urgently need to be aligned with the International Energy Agency’s net zero roadmap if we want to keep global heating below 1.5 degrees and escape the energy price and supply crises caused by volatile fossil fuels.”
Only nine of the utilities analysed have committed to phase out coal in the EU and OECD by 2030 and in the rest of the world by 2040, despite 16 pledging to reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
All will be operating fossil gas power plants in the EU and OECD beyond 2035 according to available data.
“Not one European coal utility analysed by this report is making plans to meet all science-based milestones to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees,” said Europe Beyond Coal campaign director Kathrin Gutmann.
“If Europe is to do its part for climate action and exit coal by 2030, and have a fossil-free, renewables-based power system by 2035, these companies need to show near-term plans to close coal and fossil gas plants, and massively scale up the build-out of wind and solar power generation.
“All the talk of mid-century targets is just fluff so long as their business plans have no way of delivering on them.”
The utilities analysed by the report were: BEH, CE Oltenia, ČEZ, Drax, EDF, EnBW, ENEA, Enel, ENGIE, EPH, Fortum/Uniper, Iberdrola, Naturgy, PGE, RWE, SSE, Sev.En, STEAG, Tauron, Vattenfall and Orsted.
