The European power sector has been changing significantly over the last couple of years. Although differences amongst countries remain huge, some countries have more in common than you might think.

1/ Let’s kick off with the countries, which are still being almost fully dominated by fossil fuels. These are the two island countries Malta and Cyprus, plus Poland.

2/ Then there are the non-nuclear countries, that increased the renewable share over the last twenty years, while reducing fossil share by round about 20 (or more) percentage points. These countries are Estonia, Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal.

3/ Then we have the non-nuclear countries with traditionally high shares of renewables already (mainly hydro), structurally rather moving sideways with limited RES increase. These are Austria, Croatia and Latvia.

4/ At then, we have the frontrunners Denmark, Lithuania and Luxembourg, which were able to significantly increase their relative generation of renewables.

5/ Now let’s take a look at countries which use nuclear: There are first the countries with today (relative) limited nuclear use - Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain und the UK.

6/ Then there are the ones coming in still with medium nuclear shares: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Slovenia, and Sweden.

7/ And then there are the countries which power sectors are being dominated by nuclear: Belgium, France, Hungary, Slovakia.

8/ And here they are once more all together

9/ Disclaimer 1: There are probably better ways to cluster it, would be interested to hear your thoughts. Also, some boxing choices are debateable, depends on the point you want to make.

10/ Disclaimer 2: I know, subsuming coal and gas under fossils does not reflect the emissions differences adequately. But from a net zero perspective, both need to go quick anyway, so I thought why not give it a try that way.