Newsletter (copy 29)

London's cycling comeback; Europe's greening grid

May 14, 2024

Happy Tuesday, dear reader.

Some good news to kick things off:

  • In April, 87.4% of the electricity generated in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) came from renewables and nuclear.

  • Lawmakers in the US state of Vermont have approved a measure requiring all utilities to provide 100% clean electricity by 2035.

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Nick Hedley

Editor, The Progress Playbook

In the UK’s capital, efforts to make cycling a mainstream mode of transport once again are bearing fruit.

The latest: The number of daily cycling journeys reached 1.26 million in 2023, up 6.3% from the previous year and a 20% increase from 2019, pre-Covid levels. A quarter of Londoners now cycle at least occasionally, according to data from Transport for London, a local government body.

While the city has a long way to go to catch up to the likes of Copenhagen and Amsterdam, the cycling renaissance shows how the right incentives and infrastructure investments can pay off relatively quickly.

The share of fossil fuels in the EU’s electricity mix fell to a historic monthly low of just 23% in April 2024, according to data collated by Ember.

Amid a surge in wind and solar capacity additions and a recovery in hydro output, coal’s share of the mix slumped to a new low of 8.6%, while gas was reduced to 12.1%.

Meanwhile, renewables accounted for 54% of the EU’s electrical output in April — up from 45.5% a year before. Nuclear power plants produced 22.5% of the bloc’s electricity, a marginal year-on-year decrease.

Germany had an outsized influence on the shifting mix.

- Read the full story here.

An initiative in the UK that helps households to team up and make bulk purchases of solar panels and batteries is slashing installation costs and making these technologies more widely accessible, the International Energy Agency notes in a new report.

- Read the full story here.

While there are multiple ways to go about the shift to clean electricity, the frontrunners have at least three things in common, research group Ember says in its latest report.

“Some common key enablers are galvanising the rapid growth in solar and wind around the world: high-level policy ambition, incentive mechanisms to unlock residential and utility-scale deployment, and removing technical barriers,” the London-based think tank writes in its Global Electricity Review 2024.

It references China, Brazil, and the Netherlands as examples of countries that are achieving rapid power sector transformations — yet they have “very different starting points” and unique geographies.

- Read the full story here.

A note from The Progress Playbook…

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Rolling blackouts are now part and parcel of the daily South African experience. Last year, we had only 30 days without load shedding, with a myriad of significant financial implications, writes GoSolr CEO Andrew Middleton.

“We have to take immediate measures to support a more robust and decentralised energy grid, reducing dependency on centralised power sources and mitigating the impact of load shedding.”

- Read the full story here.

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