Renewable energies will dominate the German electricity mix in the first half of 2026

The amount of electricity generated from conventional energy sources also increased by 1.7 percent. Because more electricity was generated overall, the share of conventional power plants fell to 40.9 percent after 42.0 percent in the first half of 2025. Since 2023, more electricity in Germany has been generated from renewable energy than from fossil sources.

Less coal, more photovoltaics

The most important energy source in the first half of the year remained wind power, whose share grew by 2.1 points to 29.4 percent year-on-year. The strong increase in the amount of wind power by 12.3 percent is largely due to the base effect that there was often a lull in the first half of 2025. In a long-term comparison, an average level has now been reached again.

The amount of electricity from coal-fired power plants fell slightly by 0.5 percent, but with a share of 21.4 percent it remains the second most important energy source in the German electricity mix. Photovoltaics increased by 3.5 percent and accounts for 17.8 percent of the total amount of electricity. 16.5 percent of the electricity was generated with natural gas. The amount of electricity here increased by 6.4 percent.

The amount of electricity imported into Germany fell by 8.7 percent to 34.5 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of the year. In contrast, the amount of electricity exported rose by 14.9 percent to 33.9 billion kilowatt hours. The bottom line is that only 0.6 billion kilowatt hours more electricity was imported from abroad than was exported there. A year ago the import surplus was 8.3 billion kilowatt hours.

A total of 230.6 billion kilowatt hours were generated and fed into the grid in Germany in the first half of 2026. That was 4.5 percent more electricity than in the first half of the previous year.