Assessing the impact of Energy Efficiency on the EU Energy Consumption in 2010-2022: an index decomposition analysis

This report examines the determinants of changes in primary and final energy consumption at EU27 and Member State levels over the period 2010 to 2022 to track and understand the progress towards 2030 energy efficiency targets. Energy consumption trends are driven by several factors beyond energy efficiency improvements, which can have a profound effect in the aggregate energy use, irrespective of the impact of energy efficiency policies and measures. To understand the latest energy consumption trends in the EU, the Logarithmic-Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) approach, a widely used Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) method, was applied to study both aggregated and sectoral energy consumption changes at EU and Member State levels over the examined period and quantify the impact of factors such as economic activity, demographics, productivity, lifestyle and weather changes. The results suggest that significant energy efficiency gains during the studied period, without which the progress achieved towards 2030 EU energy efficiency targets would have been difficult to attain. However, the results attained in recent years should be considered with caution: as they have been significantly influenced by exceptional external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic which led to a drop in energy consumption, followed by a rebound effect once the restrictions ceased, and the invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in an increase in energy prices (especially for gas) with strong interventions by the EU and Member States to limit energy consumption. With the aim to investigate the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war on energy and economic matters, an analysis at the European level has been carried out.JRC.C.2 - Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Photovoltaics Geographical Information System: Status Report 2024

The JRC’s Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS) has been supporting the uptake of photovoltaics for more than 20 years. Today this public service is even more relevant in view of a) the revised EU’s binding renewable energy target to a minimum of 42.5% for 2030; b) the EU’s commitment to a 55% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030 and; c) the commitments in the EU Solar Energy Strategy 2022, for the European Solar Rooftops Initiative, and for the EU building Renovation Wave. In 2024 the use of PVGIS continued at the record levels seen in the previous years, with more than 7.4 million users and over 800 million hits. This year, the PVGIS team released PVGIS 5.3, which includes SARAH3 and ERA5 data up to 2023 and coverage of water areas near the coasts. Development projects in progress include a) the completion of PVGIS 6.0, designated to facilitate maintenance and allow for open source version of PVGIS in the future; b) the incorporation of buildings and other objects in the default horizon profiles and c) downscaling of the temperature values based on the terrain altitudeJRC.C.2 - Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Factual summary report of targeted stakeholder consultation on EU harmonised waste sorting labels as part of the packaging and packaging waste regulation

As the European Union (EU) continues to deal with the increasing quantities of packaging waste and its environmental impact, one area of focus is the harmonisation of waste sorting labels across EU Member States. This effort aims to for easier and more accurate packaging waste sorting in the EU. In this context, between 2 September and 30 September 2024, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) invited stakeholders to a targeted consultation to gather insights on key aspects of the waste sorting labels currently being developed. The consultation concerned the design and implementation of material-based waste sorting labels as part of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). These labels will be applied to packaging and waste receptacles, providing clear guidance on proper disposal to people in the EU. This document provides a factual summary of the stakeholder contributions against the backdrop of outlining how the consultation was conducted.JRC.S.1 - EU Policy Lab: Foresight, Design & Behavioural Insight

EUSO annual report 2024

Healthy soils are essential for providing healthy food and achieving climate neutrality. The publication of the EU Soil Strategy for 2030, the proposed Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive and the Mission Soil marked major milestones for soil protection and restoration in the EU. Given this context, the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) aims to be the principal provider of knowledge and data on soils at the EU-level and to underpin EU policies related to soils. This report highlights the main activities and outcomes of the EUSO in 2024. During this period, the EUSO provided policy support to a wide range of soil related areas, including the proposed Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive, the Carbon Removal Certification Framework and the Mission Soil. A highlight was the launch of the science for policy report ‘The state of soils in Europe’, in collaboration with the European Environment Agency, providing an in-depth examination of the pressures affecting soils across Europe. Furthermore, the EUSO updated its Soil Degradation Dashboard and launched a novel EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker. The latter shows that almost 70% of the policy actions listed in the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 are completed. Next, the European Soil Data Centre, the leading web platform for sharing data and knowledge about EU soils, has grown significantly with 15 new datasets and a 20% increase in requests for datasets. Additionally, the EUSO contributed directly to advanced scientific knowledge on soils with the publication of 47 scientific papers, 10 technical reports, and 3 science-for-policy reports. Finally, the EUSO organised and contributed to activities to support stakeholder interactions and citizen engagement regarding soils. Highlights include the fourth EUSO Stakeholders Forum, the second Young Soil Researchers Forum, the European Mission Soil Week and the activities of the EUSO Working Groups. During 2025, the EUSO will continue to be the principal provider of soil-related data and knowledge while supporting the implementation of EU policy objectives in relation to soils.JRC.D.3 - Land Resources and Supply Chain Assessment

Drought resilience demands urgent actions and unprecedented cooperation

Drought risks are escalating globally, yet efforts to address them remain largely insufficient. As the global drought community and the policy representatives gather at the UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh in December, we point to the urgent need for a paradigm shift in assessing and quantifying drought risks, for developing and implementi ng transformative solutions, and for boosting policy actions and investments supported by unprecedented global cooperation, to facilitate pathways towards drought resilience futuresJRC.E.1 - Disaster Risk Managemen

Peer reviews on Transformative Innovation for Climate Change Adaptation – The National Case: Slovenia

Within the frame of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) work on transformative innovation for climate resilience, in collaboration with DG CLIMA as orchestrator of the European Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, DG R&I and contracted experts, JRC’s Unit B7 organised during the second semester of 2024 a series of on-line Peer Review workshops on “Transformative Innovation for better Climate Change Adaptation”. In order to be more practical JRC’s Unit B7 offered to the case study territories to address Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) implementation bottlenecks in a few concrete territories. Organising peer reviews with volunteers among the 14 territories covered by case studies was the most promising way to federate the experience of peers from territories across Europe on how to best address the bottlenecks. The main goal of the workshops was to help volunteering territories to define pathways towards integrating transformative innovation in their climate adaptation strategies, based on learning and exchanges with peers. Also, the aim of these peer-reviews was to experiment the methodology of the peer reviews approach in three different levels of territories (national, regional, and urban). The Peer Reviews followed up on case studies published throughout 2024 on a diverse set of EU territories that also served as a starting point of the analysis of the CCA implementation bottlenecks. Among the 14 case study territories in the Autumn 2024 three territories volunteered to undergo peer review process which were also representative of three territorial levels: National (Slovenia), regional (region Blekinge, Sweden) and urban (City of Turku, Finland). Since the topic is complex and nobody has the full answer, creating a safe space for peer exchanges based on openness and ‘no naming and shaming’ was the method proposed in the peer reviews to support advances in this field under the Chatham House rule. The three reports, based on the three aforementioned territorial granularities, aim to lay the ground for the strong and urgent imperative to deploy adaptation strategies at the right territorial level and compile the valuable testimonies shared by peers from other territories to overcome specific bottlenecks in implementation of the CCA strategies.JRC.B.7 - Innovation Policies and Economic Impac

Enhancing electricity price forecasting accuracy

Reliable electricity price forecasts are key for energy sector strategy. The presence of market volatility and price spikes may negatively affect the accuracy of predictions if not properly addressed. In this study, we introduced a novel filtering strategy designed to enhance the accuracy of electricity price forecasting by effectively identifying and replacing extreme price spikes. Our approach is grounded in the application of robust statistical techniques within a rolling window framework, allowing for the systematic cleansing of input data used for forecasting models. We validated the efficiency and accuracy of our method using state-of-the-art statistical and deep learning models within an open-access dataset framework encompassing five different energy markets. The comparison of accuracy metrics and the outcome of statistical tests consistently demonstrated improvements in forecast accuracy when using our filtered data, with gains of up to 4\% for certain models with respect to the predictions obtained with unfiltered inputs. Finally, the proposed filtering strategy exhibits reasonable and affordable computational requirements, making it suitable for practical applications in a real-world market setting.JRC.T.5 - Text and Data Minin

Towards the development of bias-corrected rainfall erosivity time series for Europe

Rainfall erosivity maps for (near) real-time soil erosion predictions require the integration of (combinations of) reanalysis products and satellite-retrievals of rainfall, and the overcoming of potential bias related to their simplified spatial and temporal scale. Across Europe, we evaluate: 1) the European Meteorological Observations (EMO) dataset to simulate the localised characteristics of rainfall erosivity at the event scale (EI30), and 2) different implementations of quantile delta mapping (QDM) bias correction to improve the prediction skill. Between 1990 and 2014, evaluations were made at several spatial (location-specific, climatic zone and pan-European) and temporal (event, annual and long-term annual average) scales. The uncorrected EMO predictions demonstrated: 1) a slight overprediction of the number of EI30 events, 2) a reduced coefficient of variation in the EI30 (CV EMO = 1.57, CV REDES = 2.5), and 3) a relatively low (R2 = 0.22, n = 139,306) location-specific predictive skill, with higher discrepancies in all cases in Southern Europe. Following QDM, the EI30 predictions significantly better represented the large-sample variability of EI30 per climate region and improved the monthly correspondence. At specific locations, station-wise bias correction was the only implementation to improve the event (R2 = 0.24, n = 139,306), annual (R2 = 0.51, n = 14,248) and average annual (R2 = 0.76, n = 1142) predictions. While bias correction can improve rainfall erosivity predictions, applications should consider possibly large error propagation into subsequent predictions, regional disparities in performance, and the potential to improve the large-sample statistical correspondence but degrade the location-specific time series prediction.JRC.D.3 - Land Resources and Supply Chain Assessment

Uncertainty Quantification for Severe-Accident reactor modelling: results and conclusions of the MUSA reactor applications work package

The recently completed Horizon-2020 project “Management and Uncertainties of Severe Accidents (MUSA)” has reviewed uncertainty sources and Uncertainty Quantification methodology for assessing Severe Accidents (SA), and has made a substantial effort at stimulating uncertainty applications in predicting the radiological Source Term of reactor and Spent Fuel Pool accident scenarios. The key motivation of the project has been to bring the advantages of the Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty approach to the field of Severe Accident modelling. With respect to deterministic analyses, expected gains are avoiding adopting conservative assumptions, identifying uncertainty bands of estimates, and gaining insights into dominating uncertain parameters. Also, the benefits for understanding and improving Accident Management were to be explored. The reactor applications brought together a large group of participants that set out to apply uncertainty analysis (UA) within their field of SA modelling expertise – in particular reactor types, but also SA code used (ASTEC, MELCOR, MAAP, RELAP/SCDAPSIM), uncertainty quantification tools used (DAKOTA, SUSA, URANIE, self-developed tools based on Python code), detailed accident scenarios, and in some cases SAM actions. The setting up of the analyses, challenges faced during that phase, and solutions explored, are described in Brumm et al. ANE 191 (2023). This paper synthesizes the reactor-application work at the end of the project. Analyses of 23 partners are presented in different categories, depending on whether their main goal is/are (i) uncertainty bands of simulation results; (ii) the understanding of dominating uncertainties in specific sub-models of the SA code; (iii) improving the understanding of specific accident scenarios, with or without the application of SAM actions; or, (iv) a demonstration of the tools used and developed, and of the capability to carry out an uncertainty analysis in the presence of the challenges faced. A cross-section of the partners’ results is presented and briefly discussed, to provide an overview of the work done, and to encourage accessing and studying the project deliverables that are open to the public. Furthermore, the partners’ experiences made during the project have been evaluated and are presented as good practice recommendations. The paper ends with conclusions on the level of readiness of UA in SA modelling, on the determination of governing uncertainties, and on the analysis of SAM actions.JRC.G.I.4 - Reactor Safety and Component

Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) – Evaluation of Fisheries Dependent Information (FDI) for EU Fleets (STECF 24-11)

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report on fisheries dependent information has been reviewed by STECF during the 2024 winter plenary meeting.JRC.D.2 - Ocean and Wate