The rate of renewable energy is not increasing in Hungary

Metropol.hu writes that eleven European countries have already reached the 2020 goal, but based on the last years, Hungary won’t be able to reach the goal. According to the newest data of Eurostat, the rate of renewable energy didn’t increase between 2013 and 2014 in Hungary, which means that green energy only numbered 9,5% of the Hungarian energy use. This rate is even worse than the 9,6% of 2012.

The rate of renewable energy grew to 16% (+1% compared to the previous year) in the European Union in 2014. Besides Hungary there are only three countries that couldn’t increase their percentage: Bulgaria (-1%), Slovenia (-0,6%) and Croatia (-0,2%). The conversion to green energy sources is an urgent concern not only due to the climate change, the protection of the environment and sustainability, but also because the European Union prevised a 20% rate of renewables until 2020. This rate applies to the whole of the union; the numbers can differ by member states.

Hungary has to reach a 13% rate. Eleven countries have already reached the goal – including the non EU member Iceland and Norway – implying to Bulgaria and Croatia despite last year’s decrease. In the European Union Sweden has the highest rate, 53%, of renewable energy and it is followed by Finland and Latvia with 39% each. The lowest rates were produced by the Netherlands (5,5%), the United Kingdom (7%), Belgium (8%) and then Hungary(9,5%) in the fourth worst place.

The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Malta are the furthest from the 2020 goal: they only completed the 39,2%, 46,7% and 47% of the 2014 goal.

“There were no investments or new power plants in the last years that would’ve increased the rate of renewable energy in Hungary” told László Magyar, the researcher of Energy Club, to metropol.hu. “For another thing, in those countries where the rate was increased, it was helped by state support or state projects whereas we don’t have this in Hungary. What’s more, the building of wind power plants is prohibited by law since 2011.”

However, the examples of countries with same facilities in the region show that the 2020 goal can be reached earlier. For instance, even though there are a lot of hydroelectric power plants in Romania, their goal is very high with a 24% rate so they built a lot of wind power plants. László Magyar thinks that their wind power capacity is now almost the decuple of Hungary’s, although the country is not more windswept than Hungary. The Czech Republic also reached their goal; they have way more solar cells than Hungary does, even though they have less sunny hours.

“Based on the last years, Hungary won’t be able to reach the 2020 goal” added the researcher of the Energy Club. “We can have 2-3 year long bigger projects that would increase the rate but we need more investments like this. The remuneration of appliances using solar energy is continuously growing so the cost of the produced energy decreased to its half in ten years, which means that these solutions can spread on a market base. However, these are mostly smaller units, houses, residential communities which only increase the rate of renewables in a small amount on a countywide level.”

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Copy editor: bm

Source: http://metropol.hu/