Renewable energies covered around 56 percent of electricity consumption in Germany in the first quarter of 2024. This emerges from projections by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW), which were presented to the dpa on Friday.

In total, renewable energy systems generated around 75.9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from January to March, around nine percent more than in the same period last year. Onshore wind turbines alone would have covered more than a quarter of Germany's electricity needs with 39.4 billion kilowatt hours.

“Hydropower has also made an above-average contribution to electricity generation in recent months with 5.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity,” it continued. This was 27 percent more electricity than in the same period last year. Overall, hydropower plants covered four percent of Germany's gross electricity consumption.

“The recently steadily increasing share of renewable energy in electricity consumption shows that we are on the right track,” said the chairwoman of the BDEW board of directors, Kerstin Andreae. The expansion of renewable energies has recently increased significantly. “This is now reflected in electricity generation.” But it is also clear that in order to achieve the climate goals we have to “go the extra mile”.