Renewable energies cover more than half of Germany's electricity needs

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"Germany is making real progress with the energy transition," says Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck (Greens). According to the department he heads, renewable energy plants generated a good 77 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from January to March – around 11 percent more than in the same period last year. There was also a clear upward trend in approvals for photovoltaic and wind power plants, as well as the construction of new plants. This is according to the latest quarterly figures from "AG Erneuerbare Energien" and the new market master data on capacity additions from the Federal Network Agency.

Wind energy provides the largest share

At the same time, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) announced that onshore wind energy plants alone produced 39.4 TWh of electricity in the first quarter of 2024, covering more than a quarter of the electricity demand in Germany. Based on its own estimates and preliminary calculations by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), BDEW comes to around 75.9 TWh from renewable energy. Hydropower has also made an above-average contribution to energy generation lately with 5.3 TWh of electricity. Accordingly, hydropower plants produced around 27% more electricity than in the first quarter of 2023, covering a total of 4% of Germany's gross electricity consumption.

Wind power overtakes lignite and hard coal

According to the BMWK, onshore wind energy was Germany's most important source of electricity in 2023. At 142.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), 22% of the electricity generated in Germany came from relevant onshore systems, compared to 124.8 billion in 2022. For the first time, wind turbines generated more electricity than all national lignite and hard coal-fired power plants combined. In addition, the number of approvals for new plants is increasing: at around 8 gigawatts (GW), more wind turbines were approved in 2023 than at any time since 2016. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, the authorities approved 2.8 GW more wind turbines than in the whole of 2017 and 2018 combined (2.4 GW). The increase in onshore wind capacity in the first quarter of 2024 was 23.6% compared to the same period of the previous year.

In 2023, 5 percent of electricity also came from offshore wind energy. Offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 8.5 GW were installed. Solar power is showing the clearest upward trend. With an expansion of 14.6 GW, more relevant systems were added in Germany in 2023 than ever before in a single year and twice as much as in 2022. Photovoltaics (PV) therefore accounted for 12% of gross electricity generation in 2023. In the first quarter alone, 3.7 GW of new PV capacity was installed. This is almost 17.5% more than in the first quarter of 2023. With the approval of Solar Package I, the Bundestag and Bundesrat recently adopted new requirements for balcony power plants, among other things.

"We need to go one better"

Wind, solar and grid expansion: "Everything is picking up", said Habeck, referring to the returns from "hard work to get faster". The important thing now is to "stay the course". Kerstin Andreae, Chairwoman of the BDEW Management Board, also believes that the recent steady increase in the share of renewables in electricity consumption shows "that we are on the right track". However, it is also clear that "to achieve the climate targets, we need to go one better." The solar package that has just been adopted contains important instruments for this. The planned measures must now be implemented quickly. In addition, the expansion and conversion of the grids must be driven forward so that electricity from renewable energy sources can also reach consumers.

(nie)