This makes renewable energies the largest item in the electricity mix.

In the previous year, their share was 44.1 percent.

Onshore power generation from wind turbines plummeted by 12 percent, according to BDEW.

At the same time, the importance of lignite and hard coal as well as mineral oil products grew.

Their share in electricity generation was according to the information at 18.6 percent, 9.3 percent and 11.9 percent.

According to BDEW, electricity generation from lignite has increased by 18 percent, and that from hard coal by as much as 26.7 percent.

According to the German Brown Coal Industry Association (DEBRIV), the enormous growth rates are also due to the fact that 2020 was unusually windy as a comparison year.

Climate targets on track

According to BDEW, the emission of the greenhouse gas CO2 in the energy industry will be 247 million tons in 2021. Although this is below the value of 257 million tons set for the coming year in the Climate Protection Act, it represents an increase of 12 percent compared to 2020. “The energy industry is still on course with its climate targets,” explained Kerstin Andreae, chairwoman of the BDEW management board.

The Working Group on Energy Balances (AGEB) also published figures on Tuesday, on which the BDEW partly relied.

Energy consumption increased with the economic recovery after the corona shock and the comparatively cool weather in the current year.

According to AGEB calculations, consumption increased by 2.6 percent compared to the previous year.

Adjusted for the effect of the significantly cooler outside temperatures, according to the calculations, energy consumption would only have increased by 0.6 percent.

Impact of high energy prices

In the last quarter, the economic dynamism hardly had an increasing effect on energy consumption, "since delivery bottlenecks, a weakening construction industry and the piling up of the catch-up effects led to a stagnation of the economic recovery," said the working group. In addition, rising energy prices have led to a "noticeable reduction in consumption" in the current year.

For the year 2021 as a whole, AGEB expects an increase in energy-related CO2 emissions by a good 4 percent or around 25 million tons.

With this number, AGEB records different emissions than BDEW when it looks at the energy sector.

This explains the difference.

The environmental organization Greenpeace called the rising CO2 figures "the poisoned farewell gift of the visionless climate policy of the grand coalition".

The new traffic light government must counter this, for example with an upper limit for coal electricity and a rapid expansion of renewable energies./hrz/DP/jha