Germany intends to increase energy production from wind and solar farms by a further 8 gigawatts (GW) over the next three years as the government tries to compensate for its decision to abandon strict emissions targets.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) junior coalition partners this year dropped plans to lower CO2 emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020.
The decision was based on expectations that Germany would miss its national emissions target for 2020 without any additional measures because of strong economic growth and higher than expected immigration.
The Bundestag lower house on Nov. 30 approved government plans to boost green energy production.
For the past few years, Germany has been increasing power capacity from wind and solar by 5 GW each year. The 8-GW increase between 2019 and 2021 is additional to that.
The government has set a new goal of increasing the share of renewable energy in Germany’s electricity consumption to 65% by 2030 from roughly a third last year.
The new plan includes also cutting the subsidy for solar energy production from 11.09 euro cents ($0.1256) per kWh to 8.9 euro cents.
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