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Germany is a world leader in renewables - both in producing them for global markets and in integrating them into its own national energy grid.
Now, new initial calcualations by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries have revealed that from January to June 2012, for the first time ever, more than one-quarter of Germany's electricity was produced through renewable energies.
"In terms of absolute energy volumes, that represents a 20-percent increase over the same period last year (from 56.4 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of 2011 to 67.9 billion kilowatt hours this year)," Germany.info reported this week.
"Power from solar energy (photovoltaics) even increased by nearly 50 percent and meanwhile supplies more than 5 percent of total power demand."
At the same time, wind energy supplies the most power - nearly one-tenth of total electricity - among renewables in Germany.
The upshot: Germany is on target to achieve a goal of boosting the share of renewables in electricity production to 35 percent by 2020.
This kind of success does not come, of course, overnight. Germany has been widely lauded for increasing the share of renewables in its energy mix via targeted and effective legislation at national and regional level, most notably through the German Renewable Energy Act ( Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG), which entered into force in 2000 and was the successor to the 1991 Electricity Feed Act (Stromeinspeisungsgesetz).
The "founding fathers" of that law included a coalition of energy leaders from a wide range of political parties in the German Parliament (Bundestag), as well as two former federal environment ministers ( Klaus Töpfer and Jürgen Trittin).
The evolution of Germany's energy policy took another turn towards renewables in 2011, when the German Government announced that it will shut down all of the country's nuclear power plants by 2022, an initiative inspired by the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.
"The energy transition in Germany is just beginning, and the world is watching," Professor Miranda Schreurs, director of environmental policy research at Berlin's Freie Universität, said earlier this year.
Germany is well on its way towards this "energy transition" (Energiewende). Several small communities - such as the village of Feldheim near Berlin - are for instance at present pioneering 100 percent renewable energy living.
To find out more about how both Germany and the United States can harness the power of renewable energies together via the exchange of best practices and political and economic partnerships, check out the Transatlantic Climate Bridge (TCB) initiative, which was launched in 2008 at the German Embassy in Washington with support from the German Government.
Karen Carstens
Editor, The Week in Germany
Webteam Germany.info
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