The generation of renewable energies this year is not delivering what it seemed to promise last year.

In the first half of the year, the share of electricity generated from wind, sun and other regenerative sources reached 43 percent of gross electricity consumption in Germany.

In the same period last year it was 50 percent.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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    While records had been achieved in photovoltaics and in onshore wind power, in the current year the first quarter in particular was significantly less windy and had fewer hours of sunshine. This is based on calculations by the BDEW energy association and the Baden-Württemberg Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW), which were published on Monday.

    Doubters consider renewable energies unreliable, especially in so-called dark doldrums.

    For these cases, controllable power plants with nuclear or fossil fuels must be provided.

    However, Germany wants to phase out nuclear energy in the coming year and also from coal-fired power generation in 17 years at the latest.

    Gas-fired power plants, which emit less carbon dioxide than coal-fired plants and which can later be converted to hydrogen, will serve as an interim solution.

    Presumably Germany will become an importer

    According to the figures, generation from solar power largely stood still in the first half of the year with a slight increase of 2 percent. Wind energy deliveries on land and at sea shrank by 20 percent. “The weather was primarily responsible for this,” said BDEW and ZSW. In the second quarter the conditions were better, but even then the share of renewables was only 45 percent.

    Proponents of the energy transition want to expand renewables significantly, network them better and store them more intelligently. Presumably, Germany, which previously exported electricity, will also have to import electricity and hydrogen in the future. The new climate protection law, which the Bundestag passed last week, stipulates that Germany must be greenhouse gas neutral by 2045. The interim target for 2030 increases from 55 to 65 percent emission reduction compared to 1990. For 2040 a new interim target of 88 percent applies.

    In order to achieve the ambitious national and European requirements, the pace of expansion for green electricity must "increase significantly," said BDEW boss Kerstin Andreae. "For the higher CO2 savings target, a share of at least 70 percent renewable energies in electricity generation is required by 2030." The ZSW board member Frithjof Staiß added that the question of how the photovoltaic expansion required for the climate targets would be doubled was still unanswered and that of wind on land should be tripled.

    According to the new data, electricity generation rose by 4.7 percent to 292 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in the first half of the year. Consumption grew by 5.2 percent to 285 billion kWh. 122 billion kWh came from renewable sources instead of the previous 137 billion. With 48 billion kWh, onshore wind power was by far the most important supplier of green electricity, ahead of photovoltaics (28), biomass (22), offshore wind power (12) and hydropower (9). Conventional energy sources delivered 170 billion kWh - 19.7 percent more than before.