Germany's renewable power share climbs to 46 percent in 2020 – preliminary data

Renewable power generation looks set to cover more than 46 percent of Germany's power consumption in 2020, preliminary figures published by energy industry association BDEW and the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW) have shown. This means an increase compared to the previous year of four percentage points, BDEW and ZSW said. "Part of this increase, however, is due to lower power consumption, predominantly caused by the coronavirus pandemic," the organisations added. Overall, renewable energy sources produced more electricity than in the year before, BDEW and ZSW said. This mostly was due to favourable weather conditions, with lots of wind energy being generated especially during the first three months of 2020, when onshore wind power production increased by four percent and offshore wind power production by eleven percent. "Unusually long sunshine hours furthermore ensured a significant increase in solar power production, twelve percent more than in the year before," they added. BDEW head Kerstin Andreae cautioned that the increased share of renewables in power consumption should not conceal the fact that renewables expansion is not happening fast enough. "Power consumption is likely to rise substantially until 2030. If expansion continues too slowly, we cannot reach our goals."

Data published by Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA) matched the estimates and also predicted a renewables share of 46 percent for this year. Thanks to the weather conditions in the first half of 2020, the share of renewables in the first six months even reached about 50 percent, the UBA added. The agency said Germany would likely see an expansion of solar power capacity of 4.4 gigawatts (GW) this year to a total of 53 GW. Wind power expansion, on the other hand, is expected to be much lower, with the capacity increase slated to reach 1.2 GW.