With a 17 percent share of energy derived from renewable sources in its 2016 gross final consumption of energy, the European Union (EU) is inching closer to its Europe 2020 headline target of 20 percent to be reached by 2020. For transportation, the 2020 sub-target is 10 percent of which the EU as a whole reached 7.1 percent in 2016, up 0.5 percent on 2015. However, the achievement range across the Member States (MS) varies considerably, from 30.3 percent in Sweden to 0.4 percent in Estonia.
According to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union (EU), Sweden and Austria were the only two Member States in 2016 to reach the target of using 10 percent of renewable fuel energy for transport – Sweden with 30.3 percent and Austria with 10.6 percent. Finland, that had reached 22 percent in 2015, dropped below the 10 percent target, to 8.4 percent.
While France reached 8.9 percent, most of the other EU Member States were around the half-way point to meeting the 2020 objective. With a use of less than 3 percent of energy from renewables in transport, Estonia (0.4 percent, Croatia (1.3 percent, Greece (1.4 percent) and Slovenia (1.6 percent), followed by Cyprus (2.7 percent) and Latvia (2.8 percent) were furthest from the 10 percent target.
Sweden and Spain had the largest year-on-year increases in their share of transport fuel from renewable energy sources with 6.3 percent and 4.1 percent respectively, while the use of this type of energy fell significantly in Finland.
