Malta Has The Highest Dependence On Fossil Fuels In The EU
Malta is the most reliant country on fossil fuels for its overall energy supply in the European Union, with a share in gross available energy standing at 96.1% in 2022.
Gross available energy refers to the total energy demand of a country of a country or region.
Most of the other EU countries had shares between 50% and 85% while Sweden (30.4%) and Finland (38.3%) had shares below 50%, according to figures published by Eurostat.
The EU’s dependence on fossil fuels for its overall energy supply stood at 70.9% in 2022, therefore, Malta tops the average by quite a lot.
This comes despite the government’s attempts at subsidising the renewable energy sector, as seen with the electric vehicle grant that has increased since 2022, and amid an EU-wide green transition that’s attempting to electrify industry.
Moreover, in 2023, numbers published by Enemalta showed that 86% of Malta’s electricity imported from the interconnector linking to the Italian energy grid is derived from fossil fuels, this is up from 81% in 2021.
The EU’s percentage decreased significantly over the last decades. Since 1990, the first year for which data are available, it dropped by around 11.5 percentage points (pp), mostly due to the increase in renewable energy.
Malta’s high numbers were followed by Cyprus (89.3%) and the Netherlands (87.6%). Most of the other EU countries had shares between 50% and 85%. Only Sweden (30.4%) and Finland (38.3%) had shares below 50%.
Compared with 2021, in 2022, the largest, yet rather small, decreases in the share of fossil fuels in gross available energy were in Latvia (-3.7 pp), Slovakia (-2.1 pp), and Hungary (-1.9 pp).
The largest increases were in Estonia (+4.2 pp), France (+2.9 pp), and Bulgaria (2.8 pp).
The year 2022 was also exceptional from the energy perspective. Being the first full calendar year after major restrictions related to COVID-19 were lifted, it was also marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, and price spikes of various energy commodities.
Furthermore, a decrease in nuclear power production in 2022 was noted. Even if renewable energy sources have increased, this was not enough to compensate for the decrease in nuclear energy.
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