Wind and solar edge past fossil fuels in Germany's grid for the first time

In 2025, wind and solar together supplied more of Germany’s electricity than fossil fuels did — 225 TWh (44%) versus 217 TWh (43%). It’s a first for the country and mirrors the same crossover across the EU as a whole, and it caps roughly two decades of buildout under the Energiewende as Germany walks away from both coal and nuclear. The pace is still accelerating: Berlin approved a record 20.8 GW of new onshore wind capacity in 2025 and is targeting 115 GW installed by 2030, alongside goals of 80% renewable electricity by 2030, a largely climate-neutral grid by 2035, and economy-wide net-zero by 2045.

Germany has to push renewables harder than France or the UK precisely because it also shut its reactors. That nuclear phaseout remains politically locked in — Chancellor Friedrich Merz called it a ‘strategic mistake’ but has ruled out reversing it. Coal is the harder near-term problem: Germany leans on it more than most of Europe, with an official exit deadline of ‘no later than’ 2038, though analysts think it will get there years early despite energy-crisis pressure to slow down.

The politics are shifting rather than settling. The far-right AfD is mounting the main opposition to renewables, while the governing coalition is simultaneously legislating new gas plants as a ‘bridge,’ meant to convert to green hydrogen by 2045. Almost no one outside the AfD wants to scrap the coal phaseout, but a government review of its timelines, due in August, will be the next signal of how firmly Berlin holds the line.