Since 1990, the importance of renewable sources for energy consumption in Germany has increased significantly. The renewables' expansion is one of the central pillars in Germany's energy transition to realize its climate goals as a member of the Paris Agreement. The gradual phasing out of electricity from fossil fuels is expected to reduce the energy sector's emissions by nearly 60 percent by 2030 compared to 1990. Preliminary findings saw gross electricity generation from renewables at 256 terawatt hours in 2022. Germany's growing share of green energy will be paramount in the European Union's efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, especially as the EU's largest consumer market struggles to retire its coal plants.
Wind power made the largest contribution to the energy mix of renewable energy sources, accounting for 21.7 percent of total electricity generated in 2022. Whilst combined wind power is the leading source of renewable energy in Germany, it has only been in recent years that offshore wind power started contributing to the energy mix. In 2013, electricity produced through offshore wind power amounted to 0.9 terawatt hours. Within just a decade, this had increased to 25.1 terawatt hours. As the leading renewable energy source in Germany, it is little surprising that as of 2021, there were over 130,000 employees in the wind energy sector. Compared to other renewable energy sources, hydropower is a relatively minor contributor to the energy mix in Germany. Since 2000, hydropower's electricity generation had declined from 24.9 terawatts to a low of 17.5 billion kilowatts in 2022.
Following wind power, solar photovoltaics are the second largest renewable energy source and the most ubiquitous across the country. As of 2022, Germany remains Europe's largest solar market, despite projections seeing its share decrease in the coming years. Germany also has the fifth largest bioenergy capacity in the world, and, again, the largest in Europe. Cumulative installed capacity of biomass plants reached 9,301 megawatts in 2020.
With the growing shares of renewables in energy consumption in the transportation, electricity, and heating sectors, massive expansion plans in wind and solar energy storage are further to boost growth in the German renewable energy industry.
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