The Unrecognized Champion

Andrei Goicea, FORATOM Executive Manager

For many years, discussions around the performance of the EU power system have centred primarily on renewables. The generation of wind and solar electricity has increased over the last decade thanks to an extensive development of new production facilities triggered by dedicated legislation (see 3rd and 4th energy packages). But there is an “elephant in the room”, an unrecognized champion of low-carbon electricity that is hardly ever mentioned: nuclear.

Nuclear provides around 25% of the electricity produced in Europe. In recent years, it has also accounted for around 50% of low-carbon electricity.

In order to clearly show how much low-carbon nuclear is generated in Europe each day, FORATOM has developed an online Widget. It provides data – obtained from ENTSO-E – on the electricity generated the previous day.  

On the homepage of the FORATOM website, visitors can now see the share of nuclear out of the total low-carbon electricity produced in the EU.  Clicking on the link take them to a more detailed section.

Under the “Low-Carbon Electricity Generation” tab, visitors can see a pie chart depicting the share of the different low-carbon electricity sources in Europe. Underneath, there is a dynamic chart enabling users to check the daily share of nuclear out of the overall low-carbon electricity generation since 1 January 2018.

The second tab, “Electricity Generation” provides information concerning power generation as a whole, and not just low-carbon sources.

The tool also includes tab entitled “Sources of Electricity by Country”. Under this section, users can click on an individual country in order to find out more about its power generation on the previous day. Whilst the map does include Switzerland and Ukraine – as they are FORATOM members – the data provided comes from the previous year as daily information is not available.

We hope that users will find this to be a useful tool – and of course, we welcome any suggestions for improvement!