EU data shows renewable energy for transport fell in 2024 by 1%
New figures from Eurostat’s SHARES database show that the share of renewable energy in EU road and rail transport actually decreased from 7.5% in 2023 to 7.4% in 2024, when not including artificial multipliers for certain renewables that only distort actual progress towards climate goals.
Fossil fuels still accounted for 92.1% of transport energy, when considered in real terms, as opposed to 88.5% with multipliers.
Meanwhile the use of crop-based biofuels in transport by Member States is capped under the Renewable Energy Directive, at a level equal to each country’s share of crop-based biofuels in the final energy consumption in road and rail in 2020 + 1%, but capped to a maximum of 7%. Even with this cap, crop-based biofuels including renewable ethanol are still the main source of renewable energy in transport by far, making up 43.6% of the RES-T mix, corresponding to 3.2% of total energy in road and rail transport.
Without considering multipliers and biofuels caps, in 2024, only four Member States (Sweden, Netherlands, Finland and Austria) are above 10% RES-T, which was the target that should have been fulfilled in 2020 under RED I. Both Sweden and Finland recorded significant drops in their RES-T compared to 2023, from 29.9% and 16.8% respectively. The Netherlands’ real RES-T rose from 8.5% to 13.2% between 2023 and 2024. Most other Member States have made little progress in this regard compared to previous years.
Category: Fuels
