The drop in demand for electric power due to the Covid-19 pandemic helped Germany reach an environmental milestone in 2020: For the first time more electricity from renewable sources was fed into the German grid than from fossil fuels and nuclear combined.
50.5 percent of the net electricity production came from wind, solar, hydro and biomass vs. 49.5 percent from fossil or nuclear. Wind power alone accounted for 27 percent of all electricity, more than brown coal and hard coal combined (24.1 percent).
2020 numbers for Japan are not yet available, but in 2017 renewables excluding hydro power accounted for only 8.1 percent of the Japanese electricity production, with hydro providing another 7.9 percent. 39.5 percent came from LNG, 32.7 percent from coal 8.7 percent from oil and 3.1 percent from nuclear.
Japan’s power generation plan for FY2030 foresees only 1.7 percent for wind power, 7 percent for solar and an overall share for renewables (including hydro power) of 22-24 percent of the total. That is less than half the share that Germany achieved in 2020, a whole decade before Japan.
- Stromerzeugung: Anteil erneuerbare Energien erstmals über 50% in einem Jahr (heise.de, 2021-01-05)
- 2019 – Understanding the current energy situation in Japan (METI, 2019-08-13)