Half-Powered by Wind and Sun — and Running Out of Grid
Germany has built the most formidable wind and solar system in Europe. Now it faces the harder challenge: a grid too slow to carry the power, and a political mood turning back towards gas.
25 years ago, coal-fired power plants provided more than half of Germany’s electricity. Today, wind and solar do. Together they generated 45% of the country’s power in 2025 — the highest share of any large EU economy, and well above the bloc’s 30% average. The shift ranks among the fastest energy transformations any wealthy nation has attempted.
| 45%
Wind & solar share, 2025 |
132 TWh
Wind — Germany’s #1 source |
87 TWh
Solar — overtook gas in 2025 |
−58%
CO₂ vs. 1990 (2024) |
A record year — but targets still out of reach
Solar had its best year ever in 2025, up 21% on 2024, overtaking natural gas for the first time. Onshore wind additions reached 4.6 GW, the highest since 2017. Coal is at an all-time low, accounting for 21% of generation. Yet the government’s 2030 goal of 80% renewable electricity requires installed capacity to roughly double in five years: from 100 GW of solar to 215 GW, and from 66 GW of onshore wind to 115 GW. Actual output in 2025 fell around 68 TWh short of the government’s own annual milestone, mainly because wind expansion has not kept pace.
The bottlenecks: grid, permits, and politics
The most urgent problem is the electricity grid. Germany has just 1.7 GW of large-scale electricity storage for a system where variable renewables already exceed 60% of generation, a strikingly low figure. Congestion already forces operators to curtail clean power in some regions. Permitting is slow; specialist construction crews are scarce; local opposition delays projects for years.
Beyond the grid, fossil fuels remain almost entirely dominant in heating and transport. Renewables cover only 19% of heating and cooling, a figure that has barely shifted in years. The new government, in office since May 2025, has softened plans to phase out gas boilers and intends to build up to 20 GW of new gas-fired power capacity by 2030, double its predecessor’s target.
Exports, uses, and the carbon balance.
Germany exported 54 TWh in 2025, mainly to Austria, Czechia, Luxembourg, and Poland, while importing 76 TWh from Denmark, France, Norway, and the Netherlands when the wind dropped. It has been a net importer overall since 2023, a direct consequence of the closure of its last nuclear plants. Most wind and solar output feeds the public grid. However, industrial self-consumption of solar reached 16.9 TWh in 2025, and residential ‘balcony power plants’ are an increasingly visible part of the urban landscape.
Carbon emissions fell 58% from 1990 levels by 2024, a genuine achievement. But fossil fuels stagnated overall in 2025: the decline in coal was offset by rising gas consumption, and Germany has no legislated phase-out date for gas. A further note of caution: Germany remains the largest coal-producing country in the EU, and Ember has flagged that it relies on outdated emission factors that may undercount methane leaking from its mines, meaning the headline figures could be more flattering than reality warrants.
There is also a structural paradox worth noting. Despite leading the EU on wind and solar, Germany’s total clean electricity share, around 56% in 2025, sits well below the EU average of roughly 71%. The explanation is nuclear: France generates around 70% of its power from nuclear plants, and several other EU members retain large nuclear fleets, pushing the EU average up. Germany shut its last reactors in April 2023. The country has made an extraordinary bet on wind and solar as the sole path to a clean grid, without the nuclear foundation that flatters the EU average. Whether that bet pays off depends almost entirely on whether grid expansion and storage can keep pace.
No large economy has moved faster on wind and solar. Whether Germany can sustain that pace amid grid delays, political headwinds, and the unfinished challenge of clean heat and transport is the defining question of European climate policy this decade.
LEARN MORE RESOURCES
Fraunhofer ISE, Electricity Generation 2025: ise.fraunhofer.de
Clean Energy Wire, Germany 2030 Guide: cleanenergywire.org
Ember, Germany Profile: ember-energy.org
IEA, Germany 2025 Review: iea.org
Umweltbundesamt, Renewables in Figures: umweltbundesamt.de
This Post was submitted by Climate Scorecard Germany Country Manager, Monique de Ritter.