German Official: Renewable Energy Beats Forecasts
By Juergen Baetz
BERLIN (AP) — The production of renewable energies in Germany is expected to grow faster than the government’s forecast and account for almost half of the country’s electricity within a decade, a top official said Monday.
The current boom in new installations of wind, solar and other renewable power sources will easily top the official target of 35 percent by 2022, reaching about 48 percent by then, said Stephan Kohler, who heads the government-affiliated agency overseeing Germany’s electricity grid.
“I think this is a realistic dimension,” Kohler said. “By then we can manage to integrate it in our electricity grid.”
He cautioned, however, that his Federal Network Agency’s assessment shows that more and swifter investment is needed to upgrade the electricity grid to cope with the influx of unstable and geographically dispersed renewable energies.
