Vatican to become eighth country to reach 100% renewable energy – here’s the full list

This week has been pretty grim for climate news. From the forest fires in Türkiye AND Greece down storms over Switzerland, Italy and France and hurricane over the Caribbeanit is clear that the climate crisis is affecting our weather.

But it’s not all fiery doom and windy gloom – there was some positive climate news this week, too. That’s because Vatican will soon generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, and Pope Francis has announced plans to build a solar power plant.

It will be located just outside Rome on a 424-hectare site belonging to the Vatican and will increase the capacity of the Italian capital’s existing solar panel installations. Once completed, the Vatican will become the smallest country (in terms of land area) to be completely energy independent.

The Vatican will join seven other countries in the world that generate at least 99.7 percent of their energy from renewable sources. They are:

• Albania
• Bhutan
• Nepal
• Paraguay
• Iceland
• Ethiopia
• democratic republic of Kongo

What’s more, 40 countries generated at least 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources in 2021-2022, and 11 of these are in Europe. Germany is able to run on 100 percent of its renewables for short periods of time, and the UK’s share of green electricity increased by 10.5 percent between 2021 and 2022.

In Scotland, renewable technologies generated the equivalent of 113 per cent of the country’s electricity consumption in 2022, and while most of that came from wind power, experts predict a shift to solar power in the coming decades. In fact, researchers from the University of Exeter and University College London believe solar power will become the world’s main source of energy by 2050.

“Due to technological trajectories initiated by past policies, a global irreversible tipping point for solar energy may have been passed, at which solar energy will gradually come to dominate global electricity markets without any further climate policies,” said the researchers, who published the study in Nature communicationAccording to Independent“Solar energy is the most widely available energy source on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is growing rapidly as investment increases.”

So there you have it – while we still have a long way to go, not all climate news is bad. Stay tuned for more updates.

Did you see that this country officially has the cleanest coastal water in Europe?

Plus: The city has been recognized as a leading sustainable tourism destination in Europe..

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