News Blog

In the first six months of 2014, Germany got more than one-third of its electricity from renewable sources, according to a new report.

The country's solar power production was 28 percent higher over that time than it was during the same period in 2013, says a report from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, a German research organization. Its wind power production was 19 percent higher.

A brief summary of the report on Yale Environment 360 says that on a couple of sunny and windy days in May and June, renewable energy sources generated 50 percent to 75 percent of Germany's electricity supply. The report also shows that Germany's solar power capacity exceeds generation capacity from any other source. 

American renewable-power advocates often talk up Germany's successes in boosting renewable energy production. They see the country as proof that the United States could boost domestic renewables.

But Germany, too, continues to rely on fossil fuels. Coal-fired plants are still the country's primary electricity source, though the amount of electricity that Germany got from coal was slightly lower in the first half of 2014 than it was in the first half of 2013, the report says.