Green Energy in Europe by 2030
The European Union (EU) aims to be climate-neutral by 2050. This means significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also absorbing carbon through natural ecosystems such as forests, soil, and oceans. To achieve this 2050 target, the EU has developed a series of policies known as “the Green Deal”, whose primary goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
Energy, transport, and heating are among the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, and as a way of meeting the 2030 Green Deal targets, the EU is promoting presumably low-carbon technologies such as wind turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, electric vehicles, and heat pumps.
These low-carbon technologies will require an increased supply of raw materials, such as lithium, copper, indium, gallium and rare earth metals. On the next page, you will see the raw materials needed for the 5 technologies that the European Union is placing its policy focus on, and an indication of where the raw materials will come from.
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More about the EU Green Deal
The EU proposes that by 2030 the emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel sources such as oil, gas and coal should have reduced by 55% while renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy should have increased to at least 40%, compared to 1990 levels. The EU also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector and buildings by producing more electric vehicles for European roads and installing extra heat pumps in residential buildings by 2030.
To ensure these targets are achieved, the EU is focusing its policy interventions on technologies that produce low or no carbon emissions. A summary of the 5 technologies and the raw materials needed for their production is provided below:
Delivering on the Green Deal will require a sustainable and secure supply of critical raw materials. To achieve this objective, the European Commission has developed the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) – a policy designed to strengthen the EU's critical raw materials capacities along all stages of the value chain.
Part of the actions under the Critical Raw Materials Act includes setting benchmarks along the strategic raw materials value chain to boost the EU’s domestic capacities and diversify the EU’s supplies by 2030. These benchmarks include:
- At least 105 of the EU’s annual consumption for extraction
- At least 40% of the EU’s annual consumption for processing
- At least 25% of the EU’s annual consumption for recycling
- No more than 65% of the of the EU’s annual consumption from a single third country
An illustration of where EU supplies of critical raw materials currently come from is shown below:
More about the Green Transition Minerals Simulator
The Green Transition Minerals Simulator is a research tool developed by University College Dublin to assess how people make decisions and choices on complex social issues. This research is a completely anonymised study and is being undertaken to explore complex decision-making behaviour in individuals as social actors.