Because of the Russian attack on Ukraine, more coal is being generated again in Germany. The share of the total amount of electricity increases by 13 percent. The proportion of natural gas is also increasing. But renewable energies are also growing.
Germany continues to rely primarily on coal for electricity production. In the third quarter of 2022, more than a third (36.3 percent) of the total amount of electricity came from fossil fuels, as calculated by the Federal Statistical Office. Compared to the same period last year, the amount of coal-fired power increased by 13.3 percent. In the third quarter of 2021, coal still had a share of 31.9 percent. A total of 118.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity were fed into the grid in Germany in the summer of 2022 - 0.5 percent less than a year ago.
Despite high gas prices, more natural gas was also used to generate electricity than a year before: Here the share increased by 4.5 percent to 9.2 percent of the electricity fed into the grid. For the first time since spring 2021, more electricity has been generated from natural gas than in the same period of the previous year. Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany is trying to make itself less dependent on the enormous energy supplies from Russia. This is particularly difficult with gas. That is why the traffic light coalition is again focusing more on coal and nuclear power.
However, despite the increases in coal and natural gas, the total amount of electricity generated from conventional energy sources decreased in the period from July to September 2022 inclusive. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, it fell by 3.0 percent to 55.6 percent of the amount of electricity fed into the grid. The Federal Office explained this by saying that only a good half as much nuclear power was generated as a year earlier. Due to the decision to phase out nuclear power, three of the six nuclear power plants that were still running in Germany were taken off the grid at the end of 2021.
According to the statisticians, renewable energies such as wind power, photovoltaics and biogas contributed 44.4 percent to domestic electricity generation in the third quarter. A year earlier, the proportion was slightly lower at 43 percent. An exceptionally large number of hours of sunshine in the current year have caused a sharp increase in electricity from photovoltaic systems, as the Federal Office explained.
Because of the energy crisis, business has repeatedly appealed to the federal government to use all available resources to generate electricity. A group of experts led by the President of the Munich IFO Institute, Clemens Fuest, proposes using as many sources as possible for the power supply. "The expansion of renewable energies must be massively accelerated, as must the construction of gas-fired power plants that can later burn hydrogen," it said in a paper.
"Nuclear power plants should only be shut down when other power plants are available that do not emit CO2," write Fuest, his predecessor Hans-Werner Sinn, and entrepreneurs Christoph Theis and Roland Berger. They also called for the expansion of domestic gas production and faster planning processes for renewable energies.
