Whether the Hessians will actually consume less energy and, above all, less natural gas this winter will only be known with a certain amount of time.

In any case, the trend was reversed last year: the economic upswing after the slump in the first year of Corona and a comparatively cold winter caused the energy consumption of the Hessians to increase in 2021, and gas consumption even increased by ten percent compared to 2020.

Inga Janovic

Editor in the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and responsible editor of the business magazine Metropol.

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This is the result of the latest energy monitoring report published by the Hessian Ministry of Economics on Wednesday.

It also says: Almost half of the electricity generated in Hesse in 2021 came from renewable sources.

However, because the wind blew less frequently, there was less clean energy than in the previous year.

Less than half of the electricity that the federal state needs is produced in Hesse.

The balance sheet should be better in 2022.

Hopes for the energy transition rest on 2022

Taken together, businesses, homes and transportation consumed 707 petajoules of energy last year, four percent more than in 2020, but almost a hundred petajoules less than before the pandemic.

In contrast to the record low in the first year of the pandemic, an upswing can be seen: consumption in the transport sector rose by 6.8 percent, in industry by 3.3 percent and in the commerce, trade and services category it was 2.6 percent .

The data centers in the Rhine-Main area made a particular contribution to the latter.

Because of the data centers, the commercial, retail and service sector is the largest consumer of electricity in the country at 40 percent, followed by industry and private households, each at 30 percent.

According to the report, this distribution shows “the great importance of the service sector for the Hessian economy”.

In view of the energy transition, hopes rest on the current year.

In the first half of the year, the share of green electricity was 58 percent, in the entire previous year it was almost 50 percent.

In the first six months of 2022, as much capacity was put into operation as in the whole of 2021. The amount of electricity fed into the grid from wind was also 22 percent higher.