Spain is Europe’s champion at producing solar power, because some of its regions are especially sunny — think Seville. The Global Energy Monitor puts it this way: “The country has more utility-scale solar capacity in operation (29.5 GW) than any other European nation, and more capacity under construction (7.8 GW), and in early stages of development (106.1 GW) than the next three European countries combined.” They have 100 gigawatts of solar in development! That is all the solar capacity the US has now, and it is a much bigger and wealthier country.

Germany comes in second in Europe with 24.6 gigawatts of industrial-scale solar.

So far this year, renewables account for 57.5 percent of electricity in Spain, which is remarkable for an industrial democracy. Renewables only make 26% of American electricity, so Spain is doing twice as well as we are. Spain wants to get 74% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Wind power provides 22.4 percent of Spain’s electricity, while solar is at 18.3 percent. Solar, however, is rapidly building out.

Spain has already produced more renewable energy by November this year than it did in the full 12 months of 2023, and production is up 13%. And, this is the second year in a row that renewables produced more electricity for Spain than did fossil fuels.

All this is not an accident. The Socialist government of Pedro Sánchez has an industrial policy when it comes to green energy. He credits outgoing Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO), Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, as having spearheaded the expansion of renewables since 2018, leading to some of Europe’s lowest electricity prices for consumers. Sunlight and wind are free, so once you have built the means to capture them, electricity generation is low-cost. This is especially true at a time when the Ukraine War has caused fossil gas prices to increase substantially, hurting countries dependent on it. Ribera is on her way to Brussels to serve on the European Commission, with portfolios in competitive practices and the environment.

In contrast, when they were in power Spain’s conservatives actually put a punitive tax on rooftop solar to benefit the fossil fuel corporations to which they are close.

All the research demonstrates that Socialist democracies make people happier than other systems, and now it turns out they are better for the health of the earth, as well.

Elections matter. But so do civil society initiatives. People are forming cooperatives to share the output of solar installations. Even football (soccer) teams have done this with solar panels at their stadiums.

Spanish utilities are increasingly creating hybrid solar parks that incorporate wind turbines and batteries, as well, to ensure steady power once the sun goes down. Spain has about 1 gigawatt worth of battery storage projects under review, and has a goal of 22.4 gigawatts of battery capacity by 2030 — a deadline that some experts believe the country will easily beat.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “60% of electricity in Spain comes from renewable energy”

All in all, 59% of German electricity, almost six tenths, has come from renewables this year, with hydro the main source aside from wind and solar. In 2023, renewables only accounted for 52% of Germany electricity, so there has been a substantial advance. Half of that advance came from new solar installations, Ember says.

An amazing 11 gigawatts of new solar capacity has been added this year. As of mid-summer, Germany had 92 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, exceeding its 2024 goal of 88 GW.

Through the end of July, fossil fuel electricity generation plummeted 14.5% from the same period in 2024, reaching the lowest levels on record. The consumption of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, fell by 39% through September of this year compared to the same months in 2023.

Germany’s carbon emissions dropped by 10% in 2023 compared to the previous year, and are expected to fall again this year. If all industrialized countries met Germany’s performance, the climate crisis would be less severe. Energy-related carbon emissions in the US. fell last year, but only by 3%.

The rapid advance of solar, Ember explains, is the result of government policy changes, including the reduction in bureaucracy and easier permitting and “simplified grid connection for small PV systems,” as well as better remuneration for consumers who sell their electricity back into the grid.

“German Solar,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Wind installations kept pace with those of the previous year, at 2.3 gigawatts. Wind-generated electricity was up 7% this year. Although wind’s progress was not as spectacular as that of solar, it still did make impressive advances, and there is a lot of capacity in the pipeline. Germany won’t quite meet its goals for total wind installations of 80 gigawatts this year, but those goals are the most ambitious in the European Union.

Winds have been anemic in the summer and fall, but are expected to pick up in the last two months of the year. Wind has had to be replaced with expensive fossil gas for the moment. Emissions will likely still fall, since electricity demand is lower. Wind plus battery will smooth out some of these fluctuations in the future.

There are also legal reasons for which wind will advance even more in future. Ember writes, “The German government has declared renewables to be in the overriding public interest, a privileged legal status which unlocks faster permitting and simplified procedures. Furthermore, German states are now required to allocate around 2% of their land for wind turbines.”

Ember doesn’t say so, but battery capacity is also rapidly increasing in Germany, where battery storage reached 9.9 gigawatts so far in 2024. Reuters reports that grid battery capacity in the country is up by 1/3 in 2024, an incredible advance. In the next two years, through the end of 2026, battery storage in Germany is set to increase five-fold, according to Clean Energy Wire. Battery storage allows solar energy to be captured during daylight and released at night.

CEW adds that “more than 80 percent of smaller photovoltaic rooftop systems are already being installed in combination with battery storage systems.” That combination is not nearly as common in the United States, but it should be.

Two big issues loom over Germany’s energy situation. One is the closure of the country’s nuclear plants at the insistence of the Green Party, which has been in government off and on (it is part of the present shaky coalition). Despite predictions of gloom and doom, the transition to wind, solar and battery has gone well.

Clean Energy Wire observes, “Decades of debates came to an end in April 2023, when Germany finally shuttered its last nuclear power plants after the energy crisis. One year on, predictions of supply risks, price hikes and dirty coal replacing carbon-free nuclear power have not materialised. Instead, Germany saw a record output of renewable power, the lowest use of coal in 60 years, falling energy prices across the board and a major drop in emissions.”

The other issue is the Ukraine War and Germany’s attempt to wean itself off Russian fossil gas. Germany cut its natural gas imports by nearly a third last year, and is pressing the EU to end imports of gas from Russia, still 20% of Europe’s usage. There isn’t any doubt that replacing both nuclear and fossil gas with wind, water, solar and battery is saving Germany money and allowing it energy independence from Russia.

In 2025, as Trump comes back into office, Americans should remember the cost savings offered by renewables, the environmental benefits of reducing carbon emissions and avoiding climate catastrophes, and the significance of energy independence for the US and its allies. Germany has overtaken Japan to become the world’s third largest economy.

Great Britain’s electricity system (Northern Ireland is part of the integrated Irish electricity grid) made a leap forward in August 2024. The amount of power generated by fossil fuels fell to 3.6 terrawatt-hours (TWh), its lowest level in over a century. This meant that each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed during August emitted on average just 84 grams of CO₂.

The record-low contribution of fossil fuels to British electricity in August will have affected household emissions. Heating your home with an average heat pump in August would have been eight times cleaner than using a gas boiler for instance, while charging a typical electric vehicle could have been about ten times cleaner than a petrol car.

Before August 2024, monthly generation from fossil fuels had never dipped below 4 TWh, even during the lockdowns of 2020 when demand for electricity and transport fuels plummeted. What’s more exciting is that this was the first time fossil fuels (98.5% gas and 1.5% coal) fell to third place in the British electricity mix over an entire month.

Gas power plants can be quickly and reliably ramped up when there is a surge in electrical demand or a lull in output from weather-dependent renewables like wind and solar. This makes phasing out gas particularly difficult. That’s why the results from August 2024 are so encouraging: gas appears to be losing its dominance.

While the contribution of gas to Britain’s electricity will rise again in autumn and winter, its meagre showing in a low-demand month like August suggests its heyday is waning.

What the data shows

August typically sees very low demand for electricity. There is next to no need for space heating, Britain still has low levels of air-conditioning and there is lower industrial and household demand while more people are away on holiday and fewer people are at work due to the month’s two bank holidays.

Lower demand means that less electricity needs to be generated or imported, and so a greater share of it can come from the installed capacity of low-carbon sources like wind, nuclear, solar and hydro.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

However, lower electrical demand in Britain alone does not guarantee there will be lower generation from fossil fuels. For example, the power sector in August 2022 emitted 4.4 million tonnes of CO₂, whereas in 2024, this dropped to 1.7 million tonnes.

This was in part due to Britain being a net exporter of electricity (1 TWh) to the European continent in August 2022. Whereas this year, Britain was a net importer of 1.9 TWh. To put this in perspective, this 2.9 TWh change in net monthly trade is about 80% of the electricity generated from fossil fuels in August 2024.

Compared with 2023, electricity generation from combined cycle gas turbines in August 2024 more than halved thanks to renewables and imports.

The standout increase in renewable energy for August was wind, which generated 6.8 TWh, or 33% of August’s electrical demand, compared with 25% in August 2023. Apparently there was one upside to the wet and windy weather that swept Britain this summer. This trend will continue, with significant wind capacity additions planned by 2030.

Britain’s energy system is changing

As renewable energy sources become more prevalent, weather patterns will play an increasingly important role in power generation. This will affect both the supply of electricity and its demand. The inherent risks are something that energy system planners must address to provide stability and security of supply by supporting a range of low-carbon fuels.

So far during 2024, CO₂ emissions from electricity are nearly 6 million tonnes lower than they were at the same point in 2023. Britain is on track to end the year with power sector emissions of between 30 and 35 million tonnes, which would be 40-50% below emissions just five years ago (57 million tonnes in 2019).

Emissions are expected to decrease even as overall electricity demand is likely to rebound from low levels in 2023. Slightly lower electricity prices, and the growing shares of electric vehicles and heat pumps, are contributing to rising demand. These are helping the benefits of clean electricity spread into other sectors, by shifting energy demand from high-carbon liquid fuels (transport) and natural gas (heating) over to electricity.

It may well be that 2023 marks a low point for annual electricity demand for Britain. Future growth in low-carbon heat and transport, plus data centres, AI and robotics, will push demand upwards. However, it is also inevitable that the record lows for emissions and fossil fuel generation in 2024 are merely a step towards even lower levels, as natural gas generation loses market share to renewable generation over the coming years.

This year’s milestones are encouraging signals that Britain’s energy transition is gathering much needed pace, paving the way for a future with less reliance on volatile imported fossil fuels and less impact on the environment. Indeed, by the end of September 2024, the UK’s last coal-fired power station will close, leaving gas as the only fossil fuel left to phase out.

Grant Wilson, Associate Professor, Energy Systems and Data Group, Birmingham Energy Institute, University of Birmingham; Daniel L. Donaldson, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham, and Iain Staffell, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy, Imperial College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Winter is ending in Australia, but it is worrisome that their August was among the hottest on record this year, presaging a hot dry summer to come, and raising the real risk of further massive bush fires of the sort that scorched the countryside and killed billions of animals in 2019-2020. The continent-country is highly vulnerable to climate change, with its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, right on the sea and facing coastal erosion from sea level rise. It is unfortunate that so many Australian politicians and firms have found it so difficult to let go of coal and fossil gas. Although Australia is a relatively small country, the emissions of which are not all that consequential, it just sets a poor example for the rest of the world, especially for developing countries, if a very vulnerable country like Australia is a big coal user. How can it scold China and India for using so much coal, which really is consequential for the fate of the world, if Canberra is itself so irresponsible?

Although Australia has had a love affair with coal, the dirtiest and unhealthiest of the fossil fuels, even that addiction is beginning to subside. Less that 50% of the country’s electricity now comes from coal, an unprecedented development. Obviously, not all the states are as environmentally conscious and ambitious as South Australia.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory are particularly bad actors, actually expanding their use of coal and fossil gas.

Some other states have made great strides and have ambitious goals. South Australia has gone in big on solar energy and has largely dumped coal, and is employing batteries to store and use the solar energy when it is needed at night and at usage peaks during the day. The state wants to have all its electricity come from renewables by 2027, in only three years. And it is a highly plausible plan. Already, 70% of the electricity in South Australia comes from renewables, the best record of any large state by far, though the small Australian Capital Territory in which the capital of Canberra nestles has reached 100% renewable electricity generation and in Tasmania it is 98.2%. South Australia is lightly populated, but some of the more populous states are beginning to make strides as well.

In the country as a whole, there is good news. Since 2018, Australia has doubled the share of renewables in its electricity grid, and much of this increase in clean electricity has been spearheaded by states and territories rather than the federal government.

With a population of 26 million (a little bigger than Florida, a little smaller than Texas), Australia has about 10 million households. A full 3.6 million of them, about 36 percent, have rooftop solar installations. Half of all households in Queensland now have panels on their roofs.

“Outback Solar,” Digital, Dream /Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024.

In the US, a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar. To be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar. Given how sunny it is in the US south and southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more, but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles. Australia’s homeowners clearly have managed to outmaneuver the Coal Lobby there. (We have solar panels and even in Michigan they much reduce our bill most of the year.)

The most populous Australia state, New South Wales, with over 8 million people, has made some strides in renewables. Some 35.6% of its electricity is from renewables, and 34% of its households have rooftop solar. 13% of its travel uses shared transportation, and there is an uptick in purchases of electric vehicles, though the absolute numbers remain small. NSW has banned offshore drilling and mining for fossil fuels.

South Australia, despite its thin population, is a technological leader in renewables. Not only do renewables supply 74.4% of electricity, but it has large battery projects that allow sunshine to be captured and used at night and at peak hours. The state hopes to phase out gas electricity plants in only a few years.

Batteries have also been key to California’s remarkable uptake of renewables.

Now Australia as a whole has six enormous battery projects in the pipeline.

At $1.7 trillion, Australia has the 13th largest GDP in the world. If the G20 states can get to carbon zero by 2050, that will solve the bulk of our climate worries, since all the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution will be absorbed by the oceans over time. The temperature will immediately stop rising and will decline over time. If we go on spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere after 2050, however, we will outrun the capacity of the oceans to absorb them, and the world will get very hot, and the climate could go chaotic.

In the first two quarters of the previous year, 2023, that figure was only 44%. Moreover, the percentage of electricity coming from wind, water, solar and batteries increased even though total electricity output grew by 7%.

Turkey has now overtaken Morocco as having the cleanest grid in the Middle East. In Morocco, about 40% of electricity comes from renewables. Turkiye, moreover, has a much bigger economy and has much more in the way of industry. Turkiye is in the G20, the twenty states with the largest gross domestic product.

Turkiye’s grid is still very dirty, and it burns more coal than do Poland or Germany, other big coal users in Europe. What is remarkable is that so far this year Turkish companies have cut coal’s share of the grid by 5%. Likewise, Turkiye purchased much less fossil gas this year, which is expensive in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the move to renewables reflects popular discontent with high Turkish electricity costs.

TRT World Video: “Türkiye ranks 11th in renewable energy in the world”

Renewables are cheaper. Turkiye saw a substantial increase in hydro-electric power this year, and both wind and solar surged as well.

In mid-June, the share of solar in Turkiye’s electricity reached about 16%

Turkiye plans to add 3.5 gigawatts of solar annually for the foreseeable future.

Likewise, Turkiye now has 12 gigawatts of wind power, accounting last year for 11% of its electricity generation capacity. Ankara plans, however, to add 28 gigawatts of wind power by 2035.

Turkey’s elite appears to have decided that the country’s energy dependence on Russia, from which it received the bulk of its petroleum, fossil gas and coal, is too dangerous and expensive.

Gavin McGuire at Reuters reported that for the first time this winter, wind generated more power for Britain than all fossil fuels combined. It produced 39.4% of all electricity in the emerald isles, as opposed to 36.2% from fossil fuels.

In fact, the government says, “Renewable electricity generation reached a near record share of 50.9 percent of total generation in the first quarter of the year.” That’s right. A majority of British electricity is now produced by sustainable sources. In fact, if you count nuclear, the low-carbon energy sources provided about 61% of British electricity.

Some 19.5% of British electricity in Q1 was supplied by offshore wind, and 14.3% by onshore wind. Some 2.5% came from solar PV and 2.6% from hydro. Unfortunately, Britain counts “bioenergy” as a renewable, providing 12% of electricity; but sorry, friends, burning wood and biomass is not green. On the other hand, 11% of electricity is imported from France, and that is mainly from nuclear plants, which are relatively low carbon. So the 61% low-carbon statistic likely stands.

And it is a magnificent statistic at that, for a major industrial country to have its power be 61% low-carbon — something undreamt of even a decade ago. The below chart shows the welcome downturn in fossil fuels as a percentage of electricity generation:

H/t UK.gov .

The future clearly lies with the genuinely sustainable energy sources. The government says, “Solar PV accounted for 60 per cent of the new capacity and offshore wind a third.” Amazingly enough in cloudy Britain, new solar is growing faster than new wind. That statistic is now likely to change.

Coal use in Britain has fallen to almost nothing, and the government says that after October 1, the country will not use coal to generate electricity.. I noted how historic this achievement was, given Britain’s prominence in coal production and use: “ The world’s first coal-fired electric plant opened in London in 1882. It was the Edison Electric Light Station, at 57 Holborn Viaduct. It powered electric lights and wasn’t a commercial success. In the twentieth century until about 1965, almost all British electricity was fueled by coal, after which nuclear, hydro, and from the mid-1990s, natural gas, took large shares. Coal pollution in London grew so bad that in 1952 some 4,000 to 12,000 people are thought to have died in the Great Smog, when particulate matter in the air proved so heavy that it slashed visibility and fingers of it swirled into homes.”

It is cheaper for everyone to adopt solar, wind, batteries and other renewables as soon as possible than to go on depending on coal, fossil gas and petroleum. And we’re just talking about energy costs in a vacuum here, not factoring in the climate change damage that fossil fuels do to the planet, which costs billions of dollars a year and will cost ever more as time goes on.

The report’s authors write, that in China in 2023, “more than 95% of new utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) installations and new onshore wind capacity had lower generation costs than new coal and natural gas plants. Where electric cars and two- and three-wheelers have higher upfront costs, which is not always the case, they typically result in substantial savings because of lower operating expenses.”

I repeat, solar and wind had lower generation costs. And no wonder, since the cost of solar panels plummeted an astonishing 30% in 2023. And we’re only at the beginning of the transition. Between 2009 and 2019, the price of solar electricity dropped 89%. Think about the last ten years of gasoline prices in the US. The average price of gasoline in 2014 was about $3 per gallon. In 2023 it was $3.52. In real terms, accounting for inflation, the price was probably about flat or down just a wee bit. Fossil fuels are remaining just as expensive as they always were, but renewables are rapidly declining in price. These declines will continue as new technologies are invented and implemented.

Although there are up front costs of building solar and wind farms, these new energy plants will pay for themselves over time, and by the 2040s energy will be much cheaper. The IEA says, “Today, around 50% of total consumer energy expenditure is on oil products, and another 35% is on electricity. In rapid energy transitions these swap places, making the price of electricity the key measure of affordability for most consumers.”

Since the cost of producing electricity by solar is falling so fast, whereas petroleum prices are either stable or slated to rise, if we shift from oil to electricity we obviously are saving a lot of money.

But, we’re going to need some major investments up front to unlock these lower prices. The report says, “As things stand, around USD 3 trillion is invested each year into the energy sector, of which USD 1.9 trillion is in a range of clean energy technologies and infrastructure. By 2035, total investments need to rise to USD 5.3 trillion in the NZE Scenario, with USD 5 trillion going to clean energy.”

The bottom line is the bill you get from your energy utility every month, and your monthly cost for transpiration fuel.The IEA observes, “Our projections highlight that rapid clean energy transitions result in lower consumer bills compared with a trajectory based on today’s policy settings.”

If we stop subsidizing fossil fuels and put the money instead into a Manhattan Project-style full court press for renewables, in 11 years consumers could be paying 20% less for their energy, especially in the developing world.

H/t IEA, Creative Commons license

Soon after the elected, unindicted felons passed their dirty bill, Texas was hit with an unprecedented string of 100° F. days amid one of the state’s worst and longest heat waves, accompanied by severe drought. The state also faces sea level rise along the coasts, storm surges, more powerful hurricanes, flooding, and severe winters caused by the polar vortex exacerbated by climate change. Not to mention that it experienced just last month among the worst and largest wildfires in U.S. history.

While government is powerful and economic incentives can affect economic activities, this pitiful effort to prop up the dying fossil fuel industries appears to resemble most the frenetic to and fro of a chicken that has been beheaded. A lot of energy expended just before a certain demise.

Exhibit A is a new report by the Energy Information Agency that shows how rapidly solar power is overtaking fossil gas in the state.

Wind farms produce the most renewable energy in Texas, but solar is making rapid strides, alongside vastly increased battery storage. Solar power generation in the Lone Star state has already overtaken that in California, which is saying something.

From the winter of ’22-’23 to the past winter, ’23-’24, solar power generation in Texas increased by a whopping 35%. This increased solar power generation allowed the state to use less fossil gas in the middle of the day. Yes, solar is coming on so strong in Texas that it is already displacing fossil gas.

“Solar Hero v. Gas Monster,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dark Fantasy/ IbisPaint, 2024.

Utility-scale solar now generates about a third as much power (32k GWh) as wind (108k GWh) in Texas. For the moment, wind is holding steady and only growing slowly as a power source.

Solar, in contrast, is set to grow by leaps and bounds over the next two years. Texas now has 16 gigawatts of solar power, but in ’24 and ’25 there are plans to add 24 gigawatts of solar net summer capacity to the grid.

Texas ended 2023 with 5.6 gigawatts of battery storage, but there are plans to add 13 gigwatts of battery storage to the electricity grid in the next couple of years.

Julian Spector at Canary Media explains that Texas’ ERCOT incentivizes entrepreneurial renewables:

“Unlike California, Texas does not award specific contracts to ensure sufficient grid capacity; instead, the price spikes from moments of scarce supply are meant to incentivize private developers to build power plants and make money. Developers have found that acquiring land, obtaining permits and connecting to the grid is easier in Texas than in California’s regulatory regime. The payoffs can be huge, both for developers and residents. For developers, rapidly responding batteries are well suited to making money off the sudden swings in ERCOT’s increasingly renewables-inflected markets.”

How delicious that the market and technological innovation are allowing renewables companies to outflank the corporate welfare socialism of Texas’ conservative legislators. Watch the top of the below graph moving left to right. It is showing the future:

Source: US Energy Information Administration

The combination of solar and batteries is important because after midday, solar generation begins declining. Consumers get home from work and put a big strain on the grid from 6 pm to 8 pm, when solar goes offline. Some of this shortfall is taken up by wind farms, since the winds pick up in the evening. But much of it is covered by fossil gas peaker plants, which come online to substitute for the fading solar generation.

But if excess solar power has been stored in batteries, then you can release it back into the grid as the sun sets, instead of turning to the fossil gas peaker plants. Since the latter emit a great deal of carbon dioxide as they come online, the batteries save a lot of CO2.

There are also plans for a further 3 gigawatts of wind generation by the end of 2025.

The long and the short of it is that solar growth is already so great that it is cutting down on the need for fossil gas in the Texas grid during some hours of the day and during the summer. Doubling solar capacity and combining it with a tripling of battery storage will make even greater inroads into fossil gas.

There is no point in getting a 3% loan or a bonus from the state government to build a fossil gas plant if you will nevertheless go bankrupt. Hence there are only plans to add 3 gigawatts of fossil gas capacity to the Texas grid over the next two years, only a fifth of what is planned for solar and only a fourth of what is planned for battery storage. Somebody is being left in the dust.

( Clean Energy Wire ) The year 2023 was the windiest in Germany in more than 15 years, providing excellent conditions for wind electricity generation, said Germany’s National Meteorological Service (DWD).

In 2023, the average wind speed across Germany at a height of 100 metres [yards] – a typical hub height for wind turbines in this country – was just under 6 metres [yards] per second (m/s), DWD said. Wind speeds were significantly higher than the long-term average, particularly in the winter months of January, November and December and reached the highest level since 2007.

Will renewables stop the climate crisis? | DW Documentary Video

Last year was also a good one for solar PV, but not a record year like 2022, DWD added. “From a meteorological perspective, 2023 was a successful year for the use of renewable energies in Germany,” DWD vice president Renate Hagedorn commented.

The expansion of onshore wind power in Germany is picking up again and it appears that a “politically caused” dent in newly installed capacity between 2019 and 2021 has been overcome, industry lobby group BWE said earlier this month.

Preliminary data by energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen (AGEB) showed that onshore wind turbines produced a record 114.2 terawatt hours (TWh) in Germany in 2023, while solar PV produced a record 61.1 TWh.

In January, the DWD had said that 2023 also marked Germany’s hottest year since records began in 1881, warning that the country had to “take intensive action to protect the climate and adapt to the damage caused by extreme weather events.”

Via Clean Energy Wire

Published under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .