Germany's energy transition too slow to meet 2030 renewables targets – report
Clean Energy Wire
Germany’s energy transition is progressing, but lacks the momentum needed to meet the country’s 2030 renewables targets, according to the German Institute for Economic Research’s (DIW) latest Energy Transition Monitor, which covers the first half of 2026. The targets are mandated by the country’s flagship Renewable Energy Act (EEG) which aims for renewables to make up 80 percent of electricity consumption by 2030, and includes specific goals for installed solar and wind power capacity.
“The energy transition is making progress, but not fast enough in most areas,” said Wolf-Peter Schill, the head of DIW’s research division on energy, transport and environment. “In particular, there has yet to be a real breakthrough in the fields of heat pumps and electric vehicles, which would also be necessary to reduce our dependence on oil and gas imports.”
By mid-2026, Germany had installed just under 126 gigawatts (GW) of solar PV capacity, or 58 percent of the 2030 target of 215 GW, the report showed. Onshore wind capacity stood at 70 GW, or 61 percent of the 115 GW target. Solar is expanding faster than wind, but neither technology is being built out quickly enough to reach 2030 targets, DIW said.
Unlike renewable energy generation, there are no legally mandated targets for heat pump and electric car uptake. However, figures for these technologies show that they are also progressing slowly. Battery electric passenger cars for example constitute only five percent of cars on the road (2.3 million units), even though nearly one quarter (24.8 percent) of new cars sold in the first half of 2026 were electric. Heat pumps made up just under half of all new heating system sales in the first half of the year (48.7 percent), but gas still dominates existing home heating.
The report’s findings come in the same week that Germany’s coalition government agreed to reduce subsidies for new renewable energy projects and lower curtailment compensation payments to future projects that are exacerbating grid bottlenecks. This move means the country’s renewable energy targets will be “impossible to achieve,” said Ursula Heinen-Esser, president of the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE).