A new study tracking 25 European countries from 2017 to 2023 documents a problematic reality: when droughts strike, hydropower and other renewables don't work as well as they might.
As a result, countries have to fire up more fossil fuel power plants and import energy to keep the lights on.
Europe risks a vicious cycle where conditions made worse by carbon emissions force countries to emit even more carbon.
In this case, researchers found power production in the EU from fossil fuels increased over the seven-year-period by 180 TWh, which is the equivalent of 7 per cent of the EU's total generation in 2022 , according to a 2023 European Electricity Review.
So as climate change makes dry spells more frequent and severe, Europe risks a vicious cycle where conditions made worse by carbon emissions force countries to emit even more carbon.
Huge emissions over a short period
Here's the size of the problem: Fossil fuel plants used to fill the energy gap during the seven drier-than-average years the researchers studied emitted an extra 141 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. That's more than the total annual emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the Netherlands
There's the goal of reducing imports of fossil fuels from these geopolitical areas for energy security. So there are a lot of positive advantages to the growth in renewables in Europe.
"It's true that today we are still dependent on fossil fuels to compensate for shortages in renewable energy, but there are solutions that can help us get rid of this dependency," said Francesco Cherubini, the senior author of the paper and head of NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme.
"We are on track to move away from this problem, but we still need changes in our electricity systems and networks," he said.
