Renewable energy sources statistics in the European Union

Eurostat in collaboration with the European Union Member States has established a methodology for the collection of Renewable Energy Sources statistics, which has been applied every year since 1990 producing detailed information on the evolution of the Renewable Energy contribution in the European Union. This methodology, which covers the commercially mature RE technologies, is a successful and cost-effective tool for the assessment of the European Union objectives on the Renewable Energy contribution, and for refining the information of the overall energy balances. Biomass is accounts for about 60% of the total Renewable Energy contribution in the European Union. As far as the data collection is concerned, a clearly defined breakdown of its components is required in order to produce comparable statistics in all Member States. The main lines of the methodology currently used for biomass statistics collection in the European Union is described in this paper.