Fossil Fuel Consumption In Germany Still Higher Than 2009

By Paul Homewood

Just as a follow up to my earlier post on German GHG emissions, I have looked at the comparative energy consumption figures for 2009 and 2016:

Consumption of fossil fuels has remained effectively unchanged, with coal even up slightly.

Total energy consumption has risen by 4%, from 310 to 322 Mtoe, and nuclear has dropped from 30 to 19 Mtoe.

Effectively, the increase in renewables of 21 Mtoe has only managed to offset these two factors.

Renewable energy in 2016 accounted for 12% of Germany’s primary energy consumption.

With the rest of the nuclear load due to be phased out in the next few years, and the likelihood that energy consumption will continue to rise as the economy grows, even if renewables grow at the same rate as the last decade, demand for fossil fuels is unlikely to fall from today’s levels.