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Wind turbine and photovoltaic system (in Dortmund): 14 percent more renewable electricity across Germany than in the first half of 2021
Photo:
Rupert Oberhäuser / IMAGO
Energy generation from renewable sources rose sharply in the first half of the year: it grew by around one seventh compared to the same period last year, as reported by the Federal Environment Agency.
This means that the share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption was around 49 percent - in 2021 as a whole it was still 41 percent.
According to the Federal Office, favorable weather conditions also contributed to the increase in production.
In the first six months of 2022, a total of more than 137 terawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity was generated in Germany - around 14 percent more than in the first half of the previous year 2021. According to the Federal Environment Agency, around half of this was due to wind turbines.
The experts explained the increase compared to the previous year with several reasons - for example more favorable weather conditions than in the previous year: More wind and more sunshine meant more energy generation.
In addition, however, the increasing number of new photovoltaic systems has also made itself felt: According to the Federal Environment Agency, new highs were recorded in the months of May and June for electricity generation from photovoltaics.
In both months, about as much electricity was fed into the public grid from photovoltaic systems as from all natural gas and coal-fired power plants combined.
In the entire first half of the year, they generated 33 terawatt hours or around a fifth more than in the same period last year.
Due to better wind conditions, electricity generation from wind energy increased by 18 percent from 58 TWh in 2021 to 69 TWh in the current year.
A good four-fifths of the wind power was generated on land, the rest by offshore installations.
At the same time, the Federal Office pushed for a significant acceleration of the expansion of wind power.
In the first half of the year, only systems with a total output of less than 0.9 gigawatts were added on land, and new offshore systems have not been in operation since mid-2020.
In the first half of 2022, almost 26 TWh of electricity was generated from biomass and so-called biogenic waste.
This roughly corresponded to the value of the previous year.
At almost ten TWh, electricity generation from hydropower plants was also at the level of the first six months of 2021. The share of hydropower in renewable electricity generation fell continuously due to the expansion of wind and solar energy and was recently only seven percent.
More biofuels and renewable electricity in transport
According to the experts, they could only estimate the development of the use of renewable energies in the German heating and transport sector.
Because of the sharp increase in the cost of oil and gas, they assumed that the heating sector would shift towards renewable energies.
However, because there was generally less heating than in the previous year due to the relatively warm weather, an overall fall in consumption was to be expected.
According to the information, eleven percent more biofuels and 14 percent more renewable electricity were used in transport.
However, because more people were traveling again overall, the use of fossil fuels in transport also increased significantly.
The main reason for the increase is that traffic has generally increased again after the end of the corona restrictions.
sol/AFP
