IN FOCUS / 2017-03-15
40% of electricity came from brown and hard coal in 2016
The German Federal Government intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% until 2020 from 1990. According to experts, this can only be done by shutting down old coal-fired power plants one by one.
In 2016 approximately 40% of the total gross electricity production was based on coal. This is a marked decrease from 1990 when brown and hard coal accounted for 57% of the power generated.
Coal still was the most important energy source in 2016 but the importance of renewable forms of energy is on the rise: while renewable energy sources had accounted for only just under 4% of total energy production in 1990, their share had risen to as much as 29% by 2016. Nuclear power, in contrast, is becoming less important: in 1990, 28% of the total gross electricity produced came from nuclear power plants but that figure was down to 13% by 2016.
