Visualizing Germany’s (slow) transformation to renewable electricity
For many years, German governments have pledged to leave fossil sources behind to generate electricity. The data shows that there have been some successes. But as the climate crisis worsens, electricity generation from fossil sources is on the rise again.
Electricity generation in Germany still heavily depends on fossil sources, data from SMARD, a service provided by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) shows.
In 2022, coal and lignite (also known as “brown coal”) remained the most important sources (12.4% and 20.4% for a total of 32.8%), while gas has risen to almost 11%. On the other hand, wind has come to serve about a quarter (24.7%) of total electricity demand last year.
Efforts to curb fossil sources from electricity production in Germany have shown some, yet limited success. From 2015 to 2022, production shares of coal and lignite have declined 4 and 3 percentage points respectively. Those are small numbers for a period of seven years, though.
But not only has that tendency been far too little in view of the climate crisis and the goals of the Paris Agreement from 2015. It is also more than compensated by the sharp rise (+8 percentage points) of natural gas as a source of electricity generation. Interestingly, that growth came at the same time the Federal Government decided to become completely independent from Russian gas in view of its invasion of Ukraine starting in February 2022.
Overall, fossil sources have even increased their share since 2015 slightly.
In the same period of time, renewable sources have increased their share drastically, by 16 percentage points (wind: +10, solar: +4). But instead of replacing fossil sources that are responsible almost entirely for the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), they compensate for the decline of nuclear energy and other conventional sources.
December 2022 was the first time since 2018 that electricity generation from fossil sources surpassed 50% in Germany. It was the third highest monthly value since 2015. There are multiple reasons for that peak like the rising demand in France due to maintenance down-times of nuclear reactors. Yet the development shows that the Paris climate goals are all too easy to miss if the transformation of electricity production is not taken seriously enough.
Interestingly, every source of electricity generation has had its ups and downs in the last years. Some tendencies can be seen in the daily data. As mentioned before, fossil sources are on the rise again. Daily data shows, that there are quite significant differences over the year, though.
In the case of fossil fuels we can observe production peaks in winter months (left and right side of the chart). Summer tends to have more average or low production values.
One year that stands out is 2020, in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. In April, May, and June of that year, total demand of electricity plummeted to historic lows due to lock-downs and other measures to contain the virus spread.
Ironically, the share of gas peaked in winter of 2022 exactly in a time when Government agencies warned of possible gas shortages because the import of Russian gas was halted completely in context of the war on Ukraine and the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. At that time, gas accounted for up to 25% of total daily electricity production. Low output of renewable sources contributed to those numbers.
On the other hand, daily data impressively shows how renewable sources have risen to provide close to 50% of electricity in Germany (46% in 2022, to be precise). In 2015, that value was less than a third (30%).
Taking into account the whole daily dataset from 2015 to 2022, days of low production (colored in red in the graph), that is, with less than 5% of the maximum, almost disappeared. In 2015 there were 49 of those low days, when renewables provided for less than 20% of the electricity production. In 2022, there were only 8.
On the other end of the spectrum, in 2022 days were quite common where renewables provided more than 63% of the total electricity production (dark green to black in the graph). In 2015, that amount was not reached on one day.
Looking at different types of renewable sources, one main weakness comes to sight: Both wind and solar energy are highly volatile. As the daily data shows, on some days they produce huge amounts of electricity while on days with little wind or sunshine, almost none. This fact highlights the importance of storing capacities in the transition to renewable energy.
While production from wind peaks especially from late autumn to early spring (green), the opposite is true for photovoltaics. As comes to no surprise, peaks of electricity production from sunlight (black) can be observed almost exclusively in summer. In winter, days with low production (red) accumulate.
All this shows that Germany still has a long way to go to comply with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the wish to let go of fossil energy sources. Current plans aim to leave coal and lignite as sources for electricity production completely by 2038. Far too late for many environmental organizations that demand a much quicker transition.
This visual story was inspired by charts that Nassos Stylianou and Erwan Rivault created for a story for BBC about changes in the electricity production in Great Britain. I adapted it to Germany, using official data available since 2015 from SMARD, a service provided by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). Thanks to both of them.
The code to create these charts using Python and Plotly can be found on GitHub and Kaggle.
