© Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; brochure 'Renewable Energy Sources in Figures. National and international developments, 2019'

More electricity from renewables

Solar, wind power, biomass etc. continue to increase their share in the German electricity mix. On average in 2019, they generated more electricity than all hard coal and lignite fired power plants and some 8% more than in 2018.

An increasing share of Germany's electricity supply comes from renewables. This can be seen from the latest edition of Renewable Energy Sources in Figures. National and international developments, 2019 (in German only), a brochure published by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (in Germany only). Since its first edition in 2004, this publication has provided an overview of the latest data on renewable energy usage in Germany, the EU, and across the globe. The brochure is largely based on the comprehensive statistics and data made available by the Working Group on Renewable Energy Statistics (AGEE-Stat) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Renewables delivered almost 243 billion kilowatt-hours in 2019

Electricity generation from renewable energy rose again further in 2019, by approx. 8% to nearly 243 billion kilowatt-hours. The share of gross electricity consumption covered by renewables also rose correspondingly clearly, to 42.1% (2018: 37.8%). The increase was largely due to favourable weather conditions and the further expansion of offshore wind-powered installations and of PV installations.

In 2019, solar energy accounted for 19.1% of Germany's electricity generation from renewables. Biomass made a contribution of 20.6%. Hydropower accounted for 8.3%, geothermal energy for 0.1%. More than half of the overall 242.5 billion kilowatt-hours generated came from wind power, with onshore wind power accounting for 41.7% and offshore wind power for 10.2%.

Wind energy leads the field in the German electricity mix

This means that wind energy ranked first in Germany's electricity mix of 2019, taking that position from lignite. Wind power accounted for 21.9% of Germany's gross electricity consumption in 2019. Taking onshore and offshore wind power together, a total of nearly 126 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity was generated from wind-powered installations, a year-on-year rise of 14.5% (2018: 110 billion kilowatt-hours).