About
Ember analysed EU Emissions Trading System data to understand 2020 CO2 emissions from the power sector.
The EU’s Emissions Trading System (EUETS) is a cap and trade carbon market, where companies buy or receive emissions allowances to cover their polluting activities. It covers all EU countries as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.The resulting records provide a picture of Europe’s emissions each year, although not all emissions are included.
Executive summary
Gas plants are now the largest source of power sector emissions
EUETS data shows that in 2020 CO2 emissions from gas power plants overtook those from lignite power plants for the first time, having already overtaken hard coal power in 2019.
Power sector emissions fell by 17% compared to 2019 mainly due to hard coal and lignite’s continued decline, resulting in gas making up a record 34% of the sector’s total emissions.
Despite a huge 236 Million tonnes (Mt) of emissions from gas power in one year, many European countries are lobbying for gas plants to be eligible for green financing.
Key findings
Europe's emissions data in 2020
Conclusion
Gas should not get green finance
Including gas power in the EU’s sustainable finance taxonomy will only incentivise companies to build more gas plants or switch coal plants to gas, at a time when investment in clean energy infrastructure is most needed.
As the largest source of power sector emissions in the EUETS, gas power cannot be considered a sustainable investment. A science based taxonomy will be an important tool in making finance work for Europe’s electricity transition — it cannot include gas power.
Supporting Material
Downloads
Methodology
Installations included
The EUETS power sector records include combined heat and power plants along with power only. Biomass and some waste generation is not included.
In this analysis, power sector is taken to include combined heat and power installations alongside power only installations.
Fuel categories
We added fuel categories to power sector emissions and split them by hard coal, lignite, gas, and other fuel emissions. The primary fuel was found for all installations with greater than 1Mt of emissions in 2020.
Peat, non municipal waste, oil and blast furnace gases were all mapped to other. In addition the primary fuel for many very small installations could not be researched. These are also mapped to other, but are most likely small oil and gas plants, or oil and gas cofired in biomass plants.
