Germany leads in new wind power installations in Europe

German wind power expansion accounted for 44 percent of total capacity growth across Europe in 2016, Adam Vaughan reports for the Guardian. There was an “increasingly small number of countries connecting serious amounts of new wind power” in the EU. Germany – which already boasts three times more wind power than any other country in Europe – led the field, Vaughan writes. But despite the shrinking number of countries adding substantial wind power capacities, the total share of renewables in new power sources added to European electricity grids stood at almost 90 percent (21.1 gigawatt) last year, he explains. “Wind power overtook coal to become the EU’s second largest form of power capacity after gas,” Vaughan writes, adding that the still-more dependable power source coal met a larger share of Europe’s electricity demand.

Read the article in English here.

For background, see the CLEW dossier Germany’s energy transition in the European context.