The agreement calls for an 11.7% reduction in final energy consumption across the EU by 2030, which MEPs say will help combat climate change and reduce Europe’s use of Russian fossil fuels.

In addition, European Parliament member Marcus Piper tweeted that EU countries and the European Parliament agreed that by 2030, the 27 EU member states will get 42.5% of their energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar, compared to 32% today.

To achieve this goal, countries will need to retrofit millions of leaky buildings to reduce energy waste. Since most European buildings are heated with fossil fuels, this policy is crucial to the EU’s fight against climate change.

Negotiators agreed that by 2030, end users in the region, such as homes and factories, should consume 11.7% less energy than expected. But the deal falls short of the 13% target proposed by the European Commission last year, which was intended to help countries move away from Russian fossil fuels more quickly.

The target will be legally binding. Countries will set their own non-mandatory national targets, but if they don’t add up to the 11.7% goal, the European Commission will amend them.

From 2024 to 2030, countries must reduce their final energy consumption by an average of 1.49% per year. Countries must also accelerate the rate of retrofitting of public buildings by at least 3% of the total area of public buildings each year.

The agreement will be submitted to the European Parliament and EU countries for a final vote, which is usually a pro forma procedure that does not make any changes to the agreement.

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According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable energy will account for up to 90 percent of the expansion in electricity capacity over this five-year period. By 2025, renewables are expected to replace coal as the world’s largest source of electricity.

Solar and wind make up the lion’s share of this expansion. By 2027, solar capacity will nearly triple, and wind capacity will nearly double, in part because of falling prices. New large-scale solar and onshore wind farms are now the cheapest way to generate electricity in most parts of the world.

All told, global renewable energy capacity is expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts over five years, a figure about 30 percent higher than the IEA’s forecast a year ago.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement, “Renewable energy sources are already expanding rapidly, but the global energy crisis has pushed them into a remarkable new phase of even faster growth.”

The European Union has broken records for solar and wind power generation. In the United States, Joe Biden launched an initiative to create a domestic clean energy supply chain. China also released a plan this year to bring more renewable energy online. According to the International Energy Agency, China alone is expected to account for nearly half of the world’s incremental renewable energy generation over the next five years.

With this additional solar and wind energy, the IEA says, the world still has a chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the window for achieving that goal is rapidly closing, and the world could pass the critical 1.5-degree threshold in as little as nine years as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels continue to climb for now.

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After leaving Tesla, Girotra funded a new startup called Lunar Energy and is focused on providing home electrification/energy independence solutions to households around the world.

After successfully securing significant funding from key partners, Girotra confirmed that Lunar Energy will first launch a home battery system, but no further details have been disclosed.

"More than ever, we need to adopt renewable energy in all sectors to mitigate the effects of increasing climate change.

Lunar Energy was founded with the primary goal of building cost effective hardware and software products for the residential sector.

To help households produce, store and consume 100% clean energy and eliminate their dependence on traditional fossil fuels."

As Lunar Energy’s first eco-product, the company is bringing a new generation of home energy storage systems.

This is the first step in its mission to electrify all homes and connect communities to form clean, resilient virtual power plants.

Not only will it save everyone from unexpected power outages, but it will also proactively address rising energy costs and control harmful emissions.

In addition to benchmarking the Tesla Powerwall, Lunar Energy has also partnered with Sunrun, the number one residential PV installer in the US, and SK, a large battery supplier.

Lynn Jurich, Chairman of Lunar Energy and Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of Sunrun, commented.

"As an entrepreneur, I was looking for a unique opportunity to invest in visionary and talented individuals.

Coincidentally, Kunal Girotra and the team of engineers at Lunar Energy are manufacturing home electrification products at scale.
This will greatly accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and we are excited to see Sunrun and the industry as a whole begin to deliver Lunar Energy-based energy solutions to millions of homes across the United States."

Interestingly, Sunrun partnered with Tesla to install the Powerwall back in 2020, but Sunrun is said to be having trouble getting supply chain support from Tesla, as the tech giant has been focused on delivering its products directly to customers.

In addition to the aforementioned just-publicized partnership, Lunar Energy also announced the acquisition of Moixa. A UK-based distributed energy (DER) management software company, it hopes to combine its revolutionary hardware with its proven GridShare software.

The software, renamed Lunar Gridshare, is powering a large-scale deployment of 330 MWh batteries at ITOCHU in Japan (covering 35,000 homes), currently serving Honda electric vehicles and UPS’s pure-electric fleet in the UK.

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