Germany ‘to smash green energy target’

Half of Germany’s electricity will be generated from renewable energy within 10 years, faster than the government’s forecast, an expert has claimed.

The boom in new installations of wind, solar and other renewable power sources will easily top the official target of 35 per cent by 2022, reaching about 48 per cent by then, said Stephan Kohler, who heads the agency overseeing Germany’s electricity grid.

He cautioned, however, that more and swifter investment is needed to upgrade the electricity grid to cope with the influx of unstable and geographically dispersed renewable energies.

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One of Germany’s challenges in ensuring a steady supply of electricity to the world’s fourth-largest economy is that it derives most of its windpower from the country’s north, but demand is highest in the strongly industrialised south.

To cope with that, the Federal Network Agency estimates that Germany needs to build another 3,100 miles of high-voltage lines.

Germany decided after Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster to speed up phasing out nuclear power.

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