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Wind turbines in front of a hard coal power plant: more wind, less coal.
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / dpa
Germany is getting a little closer to phasing out coal: Last year, wind power replaced coal as the most important energy source in Germany.
For the first time, more electricity was generated from wind and fed into the domestic grid than from coal-fired power plants, as the Federal Statistical Office reported on Friday.
The share of wind power in the energy mix was 25.6 percent, making it the first renewable energy source to take first place. Overall, the alternatives achieved a record share of 47 percent, after 42.3 percent in 2019 , 8 percent) and nuclear energy (12.1 percent).
Gas-fired power plants supplied 13.6 percent more electricity than in the previous year.
Overall, however, electricity generation declined because demand fell, especially in the first Corona shutdown in spring.
Over the year, 502.6 billion kilowatt hours of self-generated electricity were fed into the domestic grid.
That was 5.9 percent less than the year before.
At the same time, Germany exported less electricity to its neighbors: the amount of electricity exported fell by 8.0 percent, but still exceeded imports at 67 billion kilowatt hours, which climbed by 19.7 percent to 40.1 billion kilowatt hours.
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