Renewable energy's share of Germany's overall power supply mix rose by 5.4 percentage points last year to 46 per cent, data from Europe's biggest state-funded research and development service showed, report agencies.
Europe's biggest economy is aiming for renewables to provide 65 per cent of its power mix by 2030. It says it will abandon nuclear energy by 2022 and is devising plans for an orderly long-term exit from coal.
Out of last year's total power production of 515.6 terawatt hours (TWh), solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric generation together produced 237.4 TWh, according to data from the Fraunhofer organisation of applied science.
Green power output was up 7 per cent year-on-year, and increased its share of total production from 40.6 per cent in 2018 and 38.2 per cent in 2017, helped by ongoing capacity expansion. Coal burning accounted for 150.9 TWh last year, a 29 per cent share of the overall market, down from 38 per cent in 2018.
Electricity generation from fossil fuels has dropped as green power is given priority entrance to Germany's grid system, and as power demand has declined due to mild weather and ongoing efficiency drives. The cost of mandatory carbon emissions allowances covering coal-to-power output has also risen by 57 per cent to 24.8 euros a tonne.
Last year wind power, both onshare and offshore, produced 127.2 TWh, taking a 24.6 per cent share of the total mix. That was up 15.7 per cent year-on-year, overtaking domestically mined brown coal - which yielded 102.2 TWh, or 19.7 per cent of the total - as the biggest single power source.
Solar panels produced 46.5 TWh, 1.7 per cent more than a year earlier, to give solar a 9 per cent market share. Biomass producers generated 44.4 TWh or 8.5 per cent of the market, while hydropower plants produced 19.2 TWh, or 3.8 per cent. Green power sceptics say higher output reflects favourable weather patterns and does not fully prove the sector's contribution to secure energy supplies.
In the conventional energy mix, plants run on imported hard coal generated 48.7 TWh or 9.4 per cent of the total, gas-to-power generation amounted to 54.1 TWh or 10.5 per cent of the market, and nuclear energy 71.1 TWh, or 13.8 per cent of the mix. A small remainder came from oil and waste burning. Germany was a net exporter of 30 TWh of power in 2019, sharply down from a surplus of 48 TWh a year earlier as neighbours used low gas prices to boost generation, the institute said.
