Albania has been powered 100% with renewables since... like forever. All Hydro power as it has a lot of rivers. The only gas/turbine power plant is non-operational.
I think it is easier for smaller countries with the right conditions, to achieve it (Iceland and Norway are on a similar rate as well):
I’m not certain about the conditions in the rest of Europe, but at least in Sweden it is rare nowadays to use fossil fuels for heating. Most use electricity, often in combination with a heat pump of some kind, or district heating that is mostly fuelled by biofuel or garbage.
That's very interesting, I didn't know there's a country already where fossil heating is rare. In the Netherlands we're trying to get houses off of gas for years and have pretty much no results. Nobody wants to pay much more for heating (operationally) nor for a renovation to change the entire heating system to something electric in every household. Municipal heating is also not coming off the ground, and afaik most that do are burning stuff to create the heat. Frankly it almost seems hard to believe that it's rare to heat with fossil fuel anywhere in the EU after hearing all the aspects of all the problems with making it happen in our relatively mild climate, let alone in the colder north.
Where can I read more about how you guys managed to switch everyone to heat pumps? Or is hydro power cheap enough that you can just create heat rather than pump it around? Because that would make it a simple "replace 1 device" transition from heating water with gas to heating water with electricity. And for burning garbage, do you filter the CO2 at the exhaust or how is that green? (I don't know much about garbage burning or what kind of pollution does/doesn't come from it.)
As you say, hydro makes for fairly cheap electricity. Though here in Norway at least, exports have caused prices to rise quite a bit. You can see the current price here[1] in EUR/MWh, so divide by 10 to get (Euro)cents per kWh.
The main driver to get people onto heat pumps has mainly been just lowering electricity bill. You get up to 5x more heat per kWh, so it has a significant impact. We've also just banned oil burners[2], though not too many had those.
Water heating is primarily done using electricity, using a water heater like this[3].
In some places, especially in cities, there might be district heating where the heat and/or hot water comes from a central. In my previous place that was due to a waste plant burning trash. They filter a lot of stuff but not CO2, however the other one in the city will be getting CO2 filtering now[4] after a financial go-ahead this year from the government.
I think it is easier for smaller countries with the right conditions, to achieve it (Iceland and Norway are on a similar rate as well):
https://i.redd.it/iwqx9a21ql951.png
The exception is in years with excessive draughts, where they have had to import it. But in years of good rainfalls, they do export it as well.