The Guardian’s headline to a recent article (“Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025, report finds”) should enthuse supporters of renewable energy, as should the secondary headline: “Researchers say event described as ‘major tipping point’ for clean energy in era of destabilised politics”. And who are the researchers in question? Our old friends, the good folk at Ember, released yet another report last week regarding the marvellous progress allegedly being made by renewable energy in the EU with regard to generation of electricity.

Titled “European Electricity Review 2026”, the report’s front page also says “The EU’s electricity transition reached a new milestone in 2025 with wind and solar generating more power than fossil fuels”. I’m guessing that the people at Ember know that a handy tagline such as that is what will generate the headlines. In the case of the Guardian, naturally, it did just that.

Because you can read the Guardian article for yourself, with its own cherry-picking from the Report, I’m going to concentrate instead on the stuff in the Report which is less useful for net zero warriors.

There does seem to be a mismatch between the Report’s conclusions on page 4 and the reality. The reality is that as the EU becomes more dependent on renewables for electricity generation, so the price of electricity in the EU seems to increase remorselessly. Yet the report tells us that “the root cause of Europe’s high energy prices…[is] its dependence on costly imported fossil fuels…An increase in gas generation amid a decline in hydro in 2025 pushed up the EU’s fossil gas import bill by 16% and led to price spikes in electricity markets…”. The Report goes on to use language that might just as easily come from the pen of our own Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero:

For the EU, risks of energy blackmail from fossil fuel exporters loomed large in 2025. Investing in homegrown renewables is a key strategy to lower that risk, as geopolitics continue to destabilise.

Yet the Report makes no attempt to analyse just how dependent on China the EU has made itself by increasing its reliance on solar farms. I have already written about the problems experienced by solar panel manufacturers in the EU in the face of tough Chinese competition. Some fear that the EU solar manufacturing industry is doomed. I wrote that piece almost two years ago, so I have just somewhat lazily asked AI for an update. It tells me that roughly 95% to 98% of solar panels currently installed in the EU are imported, with China consistently serving as the primary supplier, and that Chinese production costs are estimated to be 35% to 65% lower than those in the EU, primarily due to lower energy and labour costs and massive economies of scale. Furthermore, China’s control is even tighter for internal components; it accounts for roughly 95% of global production capacity for polysilicon, ingots, and wafers. Funnily enough, the Ember Report doesn’t mention these rather worrying statistics at all.

Other statistics offered up by AI include the suggestion that from January to October 2025, Europe imported approximately 91 GW of solar modules from China, an 8% year-over-year increase in volume. Also, that while the 2025 figures aren’t yet available, the value of solar panel imports from China into the EU in 2024 was approximately €10.9 billion. It would be surprising, therefore, if solar generation wasn’t growing in the EU, but at what cost?

On page 6 we learn that because 2025 was sunnier and calmer (and drier) than 2024, solar generation across the EU grew by 20%, but wind generation dropped by 2% (despite there being more turbines) and hydro generation fell (“collapsed” might be a better word) by 12%. Celebrating an inherently unreliable energy-generating source, with its vagaries unknown and unknowable in advance, seems to be rather strange in the context of claims about energy security.

Gas generation increased by 8%, largely (we are told) because of the failure of hydro power. This was expensive, because so much gas had to be imported (in the form of LNG). We still have the absurd position that the EU doesn’t propose phasing out Russian gas until 2027.

Although coal power may have fallen to a “new historic low”, it still provides 9.2% of the EU’s electricity. And on page 19 we learn that “The EU’s remaining coal power is highly concentrated in just two countries, Germany and Poland, which accounted for more than 74% of the EU’s coal generation in 2025.”

On page 11 we find that “For the majority of EU countries, wind and solar have become central in the electricity mix. In 2025, wind and solar generated more electricity than all fossil sources in 14 of the 27 EU countries.” Of course, the corollary is that in 13 of the 27 EU countries fossil sources produced more electricity than did wind and solar combined. If the 13/14 split had fallen on the other side of the line, it might have produced a very different headline.

The EU countries which will use fossil fuels more than solar and wind to generate electricity are Estonia; Bulgaria; Greece; Ireland; Slovenia; Latvia; Romania; Slovakia; Italy; Czechia; Poland; Cyprus; and Malta. On page 14, we are treated to graphs showing the proportion and actual amount of electricity generated by solar power in each of the EU countries – at least I thought it was in all of the EU countries until I wondered where Malta was (southerly location – ought to be up there with the big boys, surely?) since I couldn’t spot it. That prompted me to count them, and I realised that the graphs are rather selective, showing the situation in only 22 out of 27 EU countries. Given that northerly Finland, at the bottom of the graph, barely registers in terms of solar power generation, the performance of the missing five must be pretty dire, I imagine.

They don’t even bother trying to pull a trick like that with regard to wind. Its decline was so significant that they haven’t included any graphs comparing its 2025 performance with its performance in the previous year. Presumably it would be a bit too embarrassing.

On page 15, we are told that “Renewables provided nearly half of EU electricity in 2025 (47.7%, 1331 TWh). Despite unusual weather conditions, the renewable share remained stable compared to 2024 (47.9%).”

I love the reference to “unusual weather”. When is the weather usual these days, according to climate alarmists? And yet they insist that we must become increasingly reliant on weather-dependent renewables? Also, note that although the renewable share of electricity generation is described as remaining stable, it actually declined by 0.2%, despite a significant growth in expenditure on renewable energy sources (including tens of billions of euros for wind farms). I suppose that’s the sort of thing that can happen if you make yourself reliant on the weather, but I’m not sure that it sounds much like energy security. Indeed, we learn this:

Renewables stayed stable because the same weather conditions that caused a drop in wind and hydro output boosted solar generation. Unusually warm temperatures over the north Atlantic (+3-4°C over the long-term average) led to a dry and low-wind first quarter of 2025. Cumulative rainfall in Northern Europe was 33% lower and average wind speeds fell by 23% in January-March compared to the average in the last five years.

A larger EU wind fleet, thanks to 5.3 GW of new wind commissioned in the first half of 2025, was not enough to compensate for the exceptionally low wind speeds at the start of the year. Wind production was 18% lower in the first four months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.

It’s a good job that the sun shone quite a lot, otherwise Ember wouldn’t have had much with which to generate its headlines.

The graphs on page 15 also show significantly more renewables (hydro, solar and wind) generation in the summer months than in the winter months. Possibly that’s not too problematic for the more southerly EU countries, but for those north of the Alps, it’s an unhelpful feature.

Page 17 provides some concerning information for renewables enthusiasts, regarding the increased demand for gas and the reasons for that increased demand:

In Germany, gas replaced hydro as a dispatchable fuel to meet demand in hours with low solar and wind production. In fact, the hours with the largest increase in gas coincided with the biggest fall in generation from domestic hydro and a decrease in net imports, in particular from France, Switzerland and Austria – all experiencing a fall in hydro on a similar scale to Germany.

In Spain, the impact of a drop in hydro generation was exacerbated by an increased use of gas power plants for grid services, such as voltage control, after the Iberian blackout in April 2025.

Oh dear, not such a good advert for renewables, after all. But wait – we can rest easy:

This increased gas use for grid services in Spain is however expected to be temporary as long-awaited rule changes were approved in June 2025, allowing generators other than gas plants to participate in voltage control services starting from January 2026. Many of the grid services provided by gas in Spain’s power system can equally be provided by clean alternatives.

Time will tell.

Is gas expensive? Yes, the price of natural gas was 5.6% higher in 2025 than in 2024, according to Ember (and the figure does look to be broadly correct), but there is more to it than that. It seems that in the EU gas generation is at even more of a disadvantage in terms of artificial “carbon costs” loaded onto it than here in the UK. For instance, in the EU emitters must pay for carbon dioxide allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System. According to the Trading Economics website:

EU Carbon Permits rose to 88.37 EUR on January 27, 2026, up 1.42% from the previous day. Over the past month, EU Carbon Permits’s price has risen 1.04%, and is up 10.10% compared to the same time last year, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity.

It looks as though claims that electricity generated by renewables are cheaper than electricity generated by gas in the EU are as dubious as are such claims about the Levelised cost of Electricity in the UK.

Indeed, another Ember website page rather gives the game away. The page in question is headed “European electricity prices and costs” and “compares European electricity prices, carbon prices and the cost of generating electricity using fossil fuels and renewables.” The second graph (“The price of emissions allowances in Europe – Cost per tonne of carbon dioxide produced”) shows a steady upwards rise in the “cost of carbon” over the last couple of years. Remove this artifical cost, and gas would immediately revert to being much cheaper than renewables. And the last graph on the page shows that indeed price comparison claims are the same as those used by the UK government, relying on a “Levelised Cost” calculation for renewables, rather than a calculation which includes the whole-system costs associated with renewables. Thus, the claim (on page 21) that “Solar is driving prices down, gas is driving them up” is highly contentious, to say the least. Include whole-system costs and scrap the artifical “carbon cost” and the opposite would be true (and more so with regard to the price of wind generation).

The rest of the Report is largely devoted to claiming that battery storage can solve any remaining problems associated with the vagaries of renewables. Ironically, we are told (on page 23) that “A big jump in the value of Chinese batteries imports to the EU in the first 11 months of 2025 is a sign of the strength of the pipeline.” [My emphasis]. Oh yes, that much-vaunted energy security again! There is a great deal of clutching at straws here:

In 2025, Italy’s batteries contributed to meeting demand during peak gas-use hours, a trend that could rapidly accelerate as that pipeline is built. In September 2025, large-scale battery systems discharged an average of 1.1 GW during the early evening hours (7–8 pm). This accounted for only 3% of demand in those hours, compared to fossil power’s 52% share. However, with the delivery of the development pipeline, battery capacity could quickly grow by nearly six times, meet higher shares of demand during peak gas-use hours and reduce the country’s high reliance on expensive gas.

There is still more irony on display at page 26, which concedes that:

Germany curtailed about 3.1% of their total solar generation in 2025, up from 1.9% in 2024, while monthly wind curtailment remained at an average of 4.8% into 2025. Overall, Germany curtailed an estimated 9.6 TWh of wind and solar generation in 2025, nearly 4% of the total generation of these fuels.

But all will apparently be well – battery storage to the rescue!

The report concludes with a list of policy recommendations, which require us to read between the lines.

The Report begins this section by saying that “Homegrown wind and solar are becoming the backbone of Europe’s power system.” Yet as we have seen, they tend to be dependent on China, and are anything but home grown.

Customers should be rewarded for “demand flexibility”. That’s a euphemism for rationing, when renewables fail to deliver.

Grid capacity must be increased rapidly. But the need for increased capacity is a function, not a glitch, of renewables. No mention is made of the cost, either in hard cash or to the environment, of this urgent need.

The European Commission must ensure Member States implement existing rules and be held accountable for non-compliance.

Hmmm. That sounds rather totalitarian. Do the voters in the offending EU countries get a say?

Support investment in heat pumps and other electric technologies through state aid….

I thought state aid was anathema in the EU? Not where net zero policies are concerned, apparently. In any event, “state aid” is a euphemism for directing taxpayer funds to subsidies. Given the claims about the cheapness of renewables, why do they continue to need subsidies? And why do we need the next recommendation (which is “rebalancing taxes and energy costs”)?

The final two seem to be something of an admission of problems:

Secure power lines against sabotage and deploy new interconnectors to protect against disruption from blackouts and attacks, especially in regions with the highest risk of incidents.

And:

Government, energy, financial and military stakeholders should collaborate to strengthen and protect grids and renewables.

All in all, the Report may have generated the desired headlines, but its contents represent little more than whistling in the dark to maintain the flagging spirits of the faithful.