Wind and Solar Capacity is Growing Across the EU

The clean power revolution is not a single country story

The shift to a system backed by wind and solar is evident across the EU’s Member States. The largest wind and solar capacity additions came from Germany (+42 GW, +38%), which added 22% of new capacity to the EU total, and Spain (+25 GW, +69%), which contributed 13%. Whilst these two countries led the way, strong progress was made across the region.

More than half of the 27 Member States have at least doubled, and in many cases more than tripled, their wind and solar capacity from 2019 to 2023. Together these 14 countries, which exclude Germany and Spain, have added 74 GW of new wind and solar, representing 39% of the total EU capacity increase since 2019. This includes countries with relatively limited installed capacity as of 2019, such as Slovenia, which added 800 MW to reach 1 GW in 2023. But it also includes the bigger power system of the Netherlands, which added 23 GW to triple its wind and solar capacity to reach 35 GW in 2023.

There was also an acceleration in the transition to clean power in Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary has added more than 4 GW of new solar since 2019, increasing installed capacity by 4 times to reach 6 GW in 2023. Meanwhile, Poland has increased its wind and solar capacity by 3.4 times in these four years, adding 18 GW or 9% of the total new capacity in the EU.

See the data tab for global dataset.