Have climate policies accelerated energy transitions? Historical evolution of electricity mix in the G7 and the EU compared to net-zero targets

Climate policies are often assumed to have significant impacts on the nature and speed of energy transitions. To investigate this hypothesis, we trace electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU between 1960 and 2022 and examine whether and how climate policies altered the transitions beyond historical trends. Additionally, we conduct a feasibility analysis of the required transition in these countries between 2020 and 2035 to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C. We find that climate policies have so far had limited impacts: while they may have influenced the choice of deployed technologies and thereby affected the type of transitions, they have not accelerated the speed either by expediting the growth of modern renewables or hastening the decline of fossil fuels. Instead, electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU have strongly correlated with the changes in electricity demand throughout the last six decades. In contrast, meeting the 1.5 °C target requires unprecedented supply-driven transitions in 2020-2035 where all G7 countries and the EU must immediately develop low-carbon electricity five times faster and reduce fossil fuels two times faster on average compared to the rates observed in 2015-2020. This indicates the insufficiency of incremental changes and the need for drastically different measures to meet the climate target.