Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck said: “Germany is making good progress with the energy transition. The hard work that is being done to accelerate the transition to clean energy is having an effect: more than half of our electricity now comes from renewables thanks to the expansion of wind and solar power and the electricity grid. Momentum is picking up in all these areas and it’s important now to keep it up.”

Onshore wind energy was Germany‘s most important source of electricity in 2023: 22 per cent of the electricity generated in Germany came from onshore wind turbines (2023: 142.1 billion kWh / 2022: 124.8 billion kWh). This means that, for the first time, wind turbines generated more electricity than all lignite and hard coal-fired power plants in Germany combined. This trend continued through the first quarter of 2024. In addition, the number of approvals granted for new plants is increasing: at around 8 GW, more wind turbines were approved in 2023 than at any time since 2016. This momentum increased once again at the beginning of 2024: in the first quarter of 2024 alone, more wind turbines were approved than in the 2017 and 2018 combined (2.8 GW vs. 2.4 GW). The expansion of onshore wind capacity also increased by 23.6% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year.

A much stronger momentum can also be seen in the offshore wind sector. In 2023, 5 per cent of electricity came from offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 8.5 GW. At the same time, a cumulative 8.8 GW of offshore wind capacity was successfully tendered in 2023. This is more wind capacity than previously existed in Germany.

Solar power is showing the most significant upward trend. With an expansion of 14.6 gigawatts (GW), more PV systems were installed in Germany in 2023 than ever before in a single year and twice as much as in 2022. As a result, the share of photovoltaics in gross electricity generation in 2023 was 12
per cent. The expansion of PV production capacity accelerated even further at the beginning of 2024: 3.7 GW of new PV capacity were installed in the first quarter alone, almost 17.5 per cent more than in the first quarter of 2023.