The production and use of energy account for more than 75% of EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonising the EU’s energy system is therefore critical to speed up the clean energy transition, achieve the EU’s energy and climate targets by 2030 and reach climate neutrality by 2050. Renewable energy sources, such as wind energy, solar power, hydro, tidal, wave and thermal energy have a crucial role to play in helping us achieve this goal.
A growing sector
The EU’s renewable energy sector is growing rapidly. This is positive not only for the climate (in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions), but also for reducing our dependence on imported energy and for the creation of new jobs, particularly in clean energy technologies.
Renewable energy sources are the cheapest and cleanest energy available and can be produced domestically, reducing the EU’s need for energy imports. The REPowerEU plan, presented by the Commission in May 2022 in response to the global energy market disruption caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, seeks to accelerate investments in renewable energy sources and proposes raising the renewable energy target for 2030 to 45%.
Video portraits
In the “People with energy” series of videos, we meet 6 EU citizens who work in different renewable energy installations in different parts of the EU. They explain what they do and the benefits of renewables and share their insight about the job opportunities that this growing sector offers.
The videos are available in a short and a slightly longer version with subtitles in 22 official EU languages. They can be downloaded or embedded directly from the dedicated page in the European Commission's Audiovisual Service portal or watched on DG ENER's YouTube channel (in original version with EN subtitles).
Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, the mayor of Malmö (Sweden), city model for renewable energy.