Ampel-Monitor Energiewende (Monitor of the German "Traffic Light" Coalition’s Energy Transition Targets)

On larger displays, all figures are interactive: in the upper right area of each figure there are buttons for zooming. Individual time series can be shown or hidden by clicking in the legend. On smaller screens, such as mobile phones and pads, the figures are shown as static graphs.

For photovoltaics, the coalition government has presented an expansion target of 215 gigawatts (GW) in 2030 as part of the currently planned amendment to the EEG. At the start of the traffic light coalition in early December 2021, the installed capacity in Germany was only a good quarter of this, at just over 58 GW. To achieve the target, an average of 1.44 GW per month must be added by the end of 2030, with an increasing expansion path from 2022 to 2026. This expansion relates to net capacity additions, i.e., taking into account plants that will be taken off the grid in the future. The trend in PV expansion over the past twelve months has been much lower. To reach the 215 GW target, expansion must be more than twice as fast than the trend over the past twelve months - and even nearly five times faster than the trend from 2017 to 2021. However, the expansion path proposed in the EEG amendment for 2022 calls for just under 0.6 GW per month, which has actually been achieved. After 2030, PV capacity is expected to continue to grow substantially to 400 GW in 2040. These government targets are at the upper end of the corridor spanned by the Ariadne project scenarios, and even above it in 2040 - so they tend to be more ambitious.

For onshore wind power, the planned EEG amendment specifies a target of 115 GW of installed capacity in 2030. At the end of November 2021, it was around half of that, at just under 56 GW. To achieve the target, a net average of 0.54 GW per month must be added by the end of 2030. The trend over the past twelve months was much lower, so the pace of expansion must be more than tripled. However, the expansion path proposed in the EEG amendment for 2022 only envisages an addition of around 0.2 GW per month; however, not even this target has been achieved. After 2030, the government is aiming for a further significant increase in capacity to 157 GW in 2035. The coalition's targets for onshore wind expansion are roughly in the middle of the Ariadne scenario corridor, so they appear to be similarly ambitious. This corridor is broader than that for photovoltaics, so the models differ more substantially here.

A key prerequisite for the expansion of onshore wind power is the availability of appropriate land. Nationwide, only 0.7 percent of land was legally designated for onshore wind energy at the end of 2020; by the end of 2021, the value was 0.81 percent. The goal of the traffic light coalition is to designate two percent of the federal territory for wind power by 2032, and 1.4 percent of the federal territory by the end of 2027. More information and an illustration of this can be found in the Open Energy Tracker.

For offshore wind power, the coalition is aiming for a capacity of at least 30 GW by 2030. At the beginning of December 2021, when the traffic light coalition started, the installed capacity in German waters was only a good quarter of this, at 7.8 GW. In order to achieve the expansion target, a net average of 0.20 GW per month must be added by 2030. In the past twelve months, hardly any new offshore wind turbines were connected to the grid at all. The trend from 2017 to 2021 was around 0.07 GW per month - this rate will have to be almost tripled for the 2030 target. Even after that, installed capacity should continue to grow strongly, to at least 40 GW in 2035 and at least 70 GW in 2045. These targets are in the upper range of the Ariadne scenario corridor, which is even broader than that for onshore wind power. By 2030, the federal government's targets are above the Ariadne scenarios.

The governing coalition aims to increase the share of renewables in gross electricity consumption to 80 percent by 2030. Five years later, according to the "Easter Package," the electricity supply is then to be based "almost entirely" on renewable energy. In 2020, the share was 45.1 percent; in 2021, it was only 41.9 percent, although these figures are not yet final. This decline is likely largely explained by two factors: first, in 2020, overall electricity consumption declined due to the pandemic, so the share of renewables increased despite only a small expansion. Then, in 2021, electricity consumption increased again. Second, the wind year in 2021 was relatively poor. In 2022, according to a preliminary estimate (*) by BMWK, the share rose again, to around 47 percent. In addition to a somewhat accelerated expansion of photovoltaics in particular (see above), this was due to the fact that there was more wind and sunshine on average in 2022.

To meet the 2030 target, the share must grow by more than four percentage points per year on average from 2021 onward - in the period from 2017 to 2021, the trend growth was only about two percentage points per year. The coalition's targets for the share of renewables lie within the corridor spanned by the Ariadne scenarios.

To supplement this, the figure can also show the shares of renewables in net electricity generation (NEG). They are statistically available with a much smaller delay than the shares in gross electricity consumption (GEC). The shares in NEG are generally higher than those in GEC, partly because GEC is higher than NEG due to self-consumption of power plants.

Heat pumps play a major role in many future scenarios, especially for space heating, because they use electricity to harness environmental heat and are therefore very energy-efficient (see DIW Weekly Report 22/2022). In its coalition agreement, the government did not set a specific target for the expansion of heat pumps. However, the Eröffnungsbilanz Klimaschutz document provided by BMWK mentions a corridor of "4.1 to 6 million heat pumps" in 2030. In the context of the 2nd Heat Pump Summit in November 2022, the BMWK then stated a target of around six million heat pumps in 2030 and an addition of at least 500,000 heat pumps per year each from 2024. At the end of 2021, around 1.4 million heat pumps were installed in Germany; by the end of 2022, this number rose to nearly 1.7 million (aside from heat pumps for space heating, this number also includes some heat pumps that only provide domestic hot water). Only a good 0.1 million per year were installed in the trend from 2017 to 2021; but the expansion speed has increased recently. The government target lies above the corridor spanned by the Ariadne scenarios in 2030. After that, the heat pump stock in the Ariadne scenarios continues to grow strongly, to just under 13 million to just over 16 million units in 2030.

The coalition agreement provides for "a very high share" of renewable energy in heating. However, it does not contain an explicit target for the share, only the formulation that half of the heat must be generated in a "climate-neutral" way by 2030. However, since other options such as imported carbon-neutral hydrogen or CO₂ capture in the heat sector seem unrealistic by 2030, this target can be taken as a de facto target for renewables. In 2021, their share of final energy consumption for heating and cooling in Germany was 16.5 percent. Accordingly, this share must increase by almost four percentage points a year until 2030. Since 2012, it has not even increased by three percentage points overall, or by around 0.5 percentage points per year in the trend from 2017 to 2021. In this respect, the traffic light coalition’s plans for the heating sector appear to be particularly ambitious. One concrete measure for achieving the 2030 target is the planned introduction of a requirement that new heating systems must be operated with at least 65 percent renewable heat as early as 2024.

In the coalition agreement, the government set a target of "at least 15 million fully electric passenger cars by 2030". Since significant shares of passenger cars with hydrogen fuel cells now seem implausible, this target can largely be regarded as a target for purely battery-electric vehicles (excluding plug-in hybrids). At the start of the traffic light coalition in early December 2021, there were around 587,000 purely battery-electric passenger cars in Germany. To reach the target, an average of around 132,000 vehicles per month will have to be added by 2030. The trend over the past twelve months was much lower, partly due to problems in the supply chains and long delivery times for electric vehicles. Assuming a linear progression, the growth would have to be sroound four times that. Under the alternative assumption of an s-curve-shaped progression with higher growth rates in the future, based on a study by Fraunhofer ISI, the current trend is only slightly lacking behind. In addition to the purchase premiums currently being granted, a ban on new registrations of cars with internal combustion engines at EU level for 2035 is likely to make a further contribution to increasing the battery-electric car fleet.

In the coalition agreement, the government set a target of "one million publicly and non-discriminatorily accessible charging points by 2030, with a focus on fast-charging infrastructure". At the end of November 2021, just under 54,000 charging points were in operation, including around 46,000 normal charging points and 8,000 fast charging points. This means that by 2030, an average of around 8,700 new charging points will have to go into operation every month. The trend over the past twelve months was, again, much lower. Compared with this trend, the expansion of the charging infrastructure would have to increase by around a factor of six assuming a linear progression. Alternatively assuming an s-curve, as in the case of electric vehicles, shows that the current trend would be largely on track.

The coalition agreement mentions "an electrolysis capacity of around 10 gigawatts in 2030" as a target. At the beginning of October 2021, electrolysers with an electrical capacity of just 61 megawatts (MW) were in operation in Germany. Consistent more recent data is not available at the moment. According to this, an average of around 90 MW per month will have to be added by the end of 2030. As in the case of battery electric vehicles, the linear progression shown is purely illustrative. In reality, an expansion path in the form of an S-curve is more likely. The target for 2030 is in the upper range of the corridor spanned by the Ariadne scenarios. The German government has not yet set concrete targets for the period after 2030. The Ariadne scenario corridor becomes very broad by 2045 because of the existing uncertainty about the long-term role of domestic hydrogen electrolysis.