Ampel-Monitor Energiewende (Monitor of the German "Traffic Light" Coalition’s Energy Transition Targets)
Energy targets of the German government - and what has been achieved
Why "traffic light"?
Between December 2021 and November 2024, the German government consisted of a coalition between the SPD, FDP, and Greens, commonly referred to as the "Ampelkoalition", or traffic light coalition. This is based on the party colors of red, yellow, and green.
The traffic light coalition is history - but it has left its mark on energy policy. The traffic light coalition set out to bring new momentum to the energy transition and has set itself a number of specific targets. Many of these relate to the year 2030, but in some areas they are also formulated for the longer term up to 2045. Some quantitative targets were already mentioned in the coalition agreement of the traffic light coalition, others were formulated in later legislative proposals or strategies. Achieving these targets is key to the success of the energy transition and the successful reduction of German greenhouse gas emissions.
This page presents a selection of indicators from the Ampel-Monitor Energiewende. All indicators, including the underlying data, are available open source and under a CC-BY-4.0 license on the Open Energy Tracker (OET) data platform, which is regularly updated and expanded. The OET is available in German, English, and French.
DIW Berlin's Ampel-Monitor Energiewende visualizes some of these targets and compares them with actual developments. It is based on numerous indicators from the areas of renewable electricity generation, renewable heat, electromobility, hydrogen, energy consumption and security of supply, greenhouse gas emissions and energy prices. The respective government targets are visualized using interactive graphics and regularly compared with the actual status achieved.
After the end of the Ampel coalition, this website was frozen in December 2024. The information provided here remains available. Continuously updated data and figures on the indicators mentioned here and many more are available at any time on the Open Energy Tracker.
Comparison of current status with 2030 targets
The Ampel-Monitor Energiewende shows that there is a large gap between the current status and the government's targets for 2030 for most of the indicators considered. A selection of seven important indicators is shown here. The gaps are largest for green hydrogen and electric mobility, followed by the expansion of offshore wind power and heat pumps.
What is more, the current pace of the transition is significantly too low for almost all indicators to achieve the 2030 targets. Comparing the expansion trend of the past twelve months with the pace needed to achieve the 2030 targets, onshore and offshore wind power currently lag behind photovoltaics. This indicates a particularly acute need for action on wind power. The pace of electromobility is also still clearly too slow; here, growth must pick up very strongly in the next few years.
Photovoltaics
Note on the graphs
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 solar photovoltaics (PV), the coalition has presented an expansion target of 215 gigawatts (GW) in 2030 as part of the EEG 2023. At the start of the traffic light coalition at the beginning of December 2021, the installed capacity in Germany amounted to just over a quarter of this at 58 GW. In order 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 planned from 2022 to 2026. This expansion must be net, i.e. taking into account the plants that will be taken off the grid in the future.
Wind onshore
For onshore wind power, a target of 115 GW of installed capacity in 2030 was set in the EEG 2023, by 2235 it should be 157 GW.
At just under 56 GW at the end of November 2021, this figure was only just under half as high. To achieve the target, an average of 0.54 GW per month must be added net by the end of 2030. The trend over the past twelve months has been significantly lower.
A key prerequisite for the expansion of onshore wind energy is the availability of suitable land. At the end of 2020, only 0.7 percent of land in Germany was legally designated for onshore wind energy, compared to 0.92 percent at the end of 2023. The aim of the traffic light coalition is to designate two percent of the federal area for wind power by 2032; by the end of 2027, this should already be 1.4 percent of the federal area. Further information and an illustration can be found on the Open Energy Tracker.
Wind offshore
For offshore wind power, the traffic light coalition has set a performance target of at least 30 GW in 2030. At the beginning of December 2021, the installed capacity in German waters was only a good quarter of this at 7.8 GW. In order to achieve the expansion target, an average of 0.20 GW per month net must be added by 2030. The trend for the years 2017 to 2021 was around 0.07 GW per month - this rate must be almost tripled for the 2030 target. Even after that, the installed capacity should continue to grow strongly, to at least 40 GW in 2035 and at least 70 GW in 2045.
Renewable electricity
Explanations on share of renewable energy in the electricity sector
The traffic light coalition wanted to increase the share of renewable energy in gross electricity consumption to 80% by 2030. Five years later, according to the “Easter package”, the electricity supply should then be “almost completely” based on renewable energies; however, this target was not included in the EEG 2023.
To achieve the 2030 target, the share must grow by an average of more than four percentage points per year from 2021 - in the period from 2017 to 2021, the trend growth was only around two percentage points per year.
In addition, the figure also shows the share of renewable energies in net electricity generation (NSE). They are statistically available with a much shorter delay than the shares in gross electricity consumption (GEC) and are therefore a kind of early trend indicator. The shares of NSE are generally higher than those of BSV, partly because the GEC is higher than the NSE due to the power plant's own consumption.
Heat pumps
Heat pumps play a major role in many future scenarios, particularly for space heating, because they use electricity to harness environmental heat and are therefore very energy-efficient (see DIW Weekly Report 22/2022). The government has not set a specific target for the expansion of heat pumps in its coalition agreement. In the context of the 2nd Heat Pump Summitin November 2022, a target of around six million heat pumps in 2030 and an increase of at least 500,000 heat pumps per year from 2024 was then set. At the end of 2021, around 1.2 million heat pumps were installed in Germany, compared to 1.9 million in the third quarter of 2024. However, these statistics do not include pure air-to-air heat pumps without water-based heating systems.
Renewable heat
The traffic light coalition agreement provided for “a very high share” of renewable energy in heating. However, it did not contain an explicit target for the share, but merely the formulation that half of heat must be generated in a “climate-neutral” way by 2030. However, as other options such as imported climate-neutral hydrogen or CO2 capture in the heating sector appear unrealistic by 2030, this target can be seen as a de facto target for renewable energies. In 2021, they accounted for 15.8% of final energy consumption for heating and cooling in Germany. By 2030, this share must therefore increase by almost four percentage points per year. In the trend from 2017 to 2021, it only increased by around 0.5 percentage points per year. In this respect, the coalition's level of ambition in the heating sector seems particularly high.
Electric cars
In the coalition agreement, the Ampel has set itself a target of “at least 15 million fully electric cars by 2030”. As significant proportions of 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 at the beginning of December 2021, there were around 600,000 purely battery-electric cars in Germany. In order to reach the target, an average of around 130,000 vehicles per month must be added by 2030 (net, after taking retirements into account). Even assuming a logistical ramp-up with stronger growth in later years, in this case based on a study by Fraunhofer ISI, development up to the end of the traffic light coalition was well below the target path.
Public charging points
In the coalition agreement, the traffic light coalition has set itself a target of “one million publicly accessible and non-discriminatory charging points by 2030 with a focus on fast charging infrastructure”. Around 60,000 public charging points were in operation when Ampel was launched, of which around 10,000 were fast-charging points. This means that by 2030, an average of almost 9,000 new public charging points will have to go into operation every month.
Electrolysis
The coalition agreement mentions “an electrolysis capacity of around 10 gigawatts in 2030” as a target. When the Ampel coalition started at the end of 2021, electrolysers with an electrical output of just over 60 megawatts (MW) were in operation in Germany. This means that an average of around 90 MW per month must be added by the end of 2030. By the end of 2024, the installed capacity had only increased slightly and was still just over one percent of the target for 2030. However, a good gigawatt of electrolysis capacity is still awaiting the final investment decision (FID). In addition, there are more than seven gigawatts for which feasibility studies are underway. There are also (less concrete) concepts for further projects with a capacity of almost 14 gigawatts. A specific year of planned commissioning is not specified for all projects (see column on the right). In order to achieve the target of 10 gigawatts in 2030, not only would all projects with a concrete start date that are currently at least at the feasibility study level actually have to be realized, but also a good portion of the less mature conceptual projects.
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