For the first time, Germany will cover 52 percent of its annual electricity demand with renewable energies in 2023, the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW) said on Monday.
Compared to last year, the share of renewables in gross electricity consumption went up 5 percentage points, according to a projection by ZSW and the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW).
In June, electricity generation from photovoltaics reached a new all-time record of 9.8 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), while electricity generation from onshore wind climbed to a record 113.5 billion kWh for the year as a whole, according to the projection.
"The figures show that we are on the right track," Kerstin Andreae, chairwoman of the BDEW Executive Board, said in a statement. "However, the path to a completely climate-neutral electricity supply was and is not a foregone conclusion."
Europe's largest economy is aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2045, five years ahead of the European Union (EU) target. As part of this transformation, Germany wants to achieve an 80 percent share of renewable energies in its electricity supply by as early as 2030.
A recent ruling by the country's Constitutional Court, however, put a question mark on the government's green agenda. Without a reallocation of 60 billion euros (65.4 billion U.S. dollars) in COVID-19 funds for climate measures, Germany now has to make significant savings in the coming years.
The budget of the Climate and Transformation Fund (CTF) will be cut to 160 billion euros by 2027, around 45 billion euros less than originally planned. Although the government wants to maintain its climate protection targets, it also announced cuts in the solar industry.
"The program has been curtailed. That is painful, but we are working on solutions apart from the Climate and Transformation Fund to improve things," Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) on Sunday.
Editor:Galia
