Germany Records Historic 12B KWh Solar Feed-In in July 2026
solarquarter.com
solarquarter.com
> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78gn8zvrx4o
I'm near Graz, in Austria, where we're also in the middle of a drought and in truth I can't remember a summer as hot as this one...
Extreme Heat Has Transformed What Summer Means Across Generations in Europe - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/world/europe/europe-summe... | https://archive.today/XsX2m - August 1st, 2026
Europe’s Heatwaves Are a Taste of the Climate Costs Yet to Come - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-27/europe... | https://archive.today/AqWba - July 27th, 2026
Why Is Europe Warming Twice as Fast as the World Average? - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-26/europe-he... | https://archive.today/o68OH - June 26th, 2026
And yeah, my read is that this is more arguments in favor of: it doesn't matter which way CO2 evolves, we'll need to take control over the climate if we want cities to remain where they are.
And, because of entropy, reducing CO2 already in the atmosphere is a non-starter. For one thing, one can reasonably assume that would at minimum require doubling human energy output (because unmixing costs a lot more energy than mixing)
I mean if you put the belief behind the whole CO2 reduction in words, it's like this: if we slightly reduce CO2 output (not stop, reduce by single digit percent), we won't have to adapt. And if you put it like that it becomes easy to see: "no way in hell that's going to be true".
So there's not much of a choice: geoengineering it is. Next question: which method?
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-dont-we-just-plant-lot-t...
Trees quickly reach equilibrium at which point CO2 out equals CO2 in. While they can sequester some CO2 while growing, they also generally cause an albedo increase (forests trap heat). So, for arguments sake, the opposite would actually help more: destroying forests reduces albedo reducing the planet's heat uptake, while not releasing most of the CO2 in the atmosphere, in fact, that causes it to get flushed into the ocean and it won't come back for millenia at least. Despite appearances, forest fires actually help against global warming. But not much.
In other words: right now to merely pause global warming we'd have to stop 99.7% of CO2 usage. If every square meter of the planet was covered in forests, merely to stop global warming from getting worse every year we'd have to stop ... 99.7% of CO2 usage (maybe 98% would do for 2-3 years while the trees are growing). And that's disregarding the massive albedo increase.
Also, global warming is causing massive forest expansion worldwide ... and that's making global warming worse, not better. If countries started destroying the many forests that have grown since 1900, that would help.
You want a suggestion that would actually do something? Seeding the oceans would help. It would mean global warming can be paused by a mere drop of 92% of fossil fuel usage, a big increase, at the cost of a HUGE loss of oceanic biodiversity. So I hope it's clear that while that is a far better suggestion, it is very far from a solution, and doesn't come without costs. Besides, if the climate warms further, my bet is that the oceans will "seed themselves" more and more.
I'm sorry to repeat, but no: the planet will not help us and stay static and stop warming (or even go back to normal warming) if we just "stop destroying nature". And building a few parks in cities, like it seems your real suggestion is, will do nothing at all.
Yes they already do, as evidenced by the sargassum that wrecked this season for Florida and Mexico.
If we can cut emissions entirely then that's the first step. Next devote 5% of energy generation to CO2 removal and we'll take out a year of 100% emissions in less than 20 years. We don't need to go back down to 280 ppm, something like 320 would be fine. It's a long term project but it can work.
Need step one first though.
To add to that: there are no good alternatives to coal as the stabilizer in a renewables-fed grid, for Germany. They don't have hydro and don't have nuclear. Even Spain now runs some coal despite having near-100% renewable grid for a year. That big blackout was a big lesson for all grid operators. Please don't shame countries for running a small percentage of their grids on coal.
> there are no good alternatives to coal as the stabilizer in a renewables-fed grid, for Germany.
1) political: the only economical natural gas comes from Russia, which means it's a betrayal of Ukraine (especially after the many German, and worldwide promises not to do so)
Obviously that hasn't stopped Germany. Neither the promises nor the betrayal aspect. Hasn't stopped Spain either.
2) physical: the lines got bombarded, so Germany does not have physical access to Russian gas ("kinetic sanctions"), at any price (oh and, not that it actually matters, but Germany is not willing to invest in rebuilding the lines, and before you say it can't be done, Ukraine is rebuilding Russian oil lines that Russia bombed on Ukrainian soil. Germany can rebuild, for example, Nord Stream, they just don't)
3) second political reason: only LNG is doable. There is Qatarese gas, except not right now due to Iran war, and US gas, which Germany doesn't want (it's a little more expensive). So it's buying US LNG for at least the next decade (they had to sign long term contracts to get it at all).
4) ecological. Coal is 750g-1000g CO2 per kWh, but less than half that (ie. 300g per kWh with carbon capture, which is widespread in Germany). LNG, due to the many inefficient processing steps is 350g-750g CO2 per kWh. Qatar hides their numbers, but US LNG is certainly 650g per kWh. Canadese LNG is actually worse.
So LNG natural gas is not better than coal (anymore) and it's the only kind accessible to Germany (same goes for Spain and EU)
But let's not pretend Germany cares in the slightest, after all the German Green party supported switching to coal in 2023 and again in 2026 rather than switching back to nuclear. This is not the only choice Germany has, it is the one they decided on.
Btw: in order for CO2 to reduce, fossil fuel producers (ie. Russia and Saudi Arabia mostly) need to stop digging up oil. Other posts correctly point out that if Germany just stopped, or even absorbed the amount of CO2 it currently produces, that would be a rounding error.
Or we could spread aerosols in the atmosphere (because oil will run out, which means atmospheric CO2 will start reducing by itself, according to IEA predictions, around 2050)
> Coal is 750g-1000g CO2 per kWh, but less than half that (ie. 300g per kWh with carbon capture, which is widespread in Germany).
1) have a 20 year history of increasing fossil fuel use, and on a dozen occasions, when choosing between a nuclear compromise and more CO2, systematically choose "no compromise!"
2) technically part of 1, but so serious it deserves it's own point, when this decision turned out in 2014 to be far more disastrous than initially expected, the Greens doubled down choosing to warm the climate further
3) Again, technically part of ... but after 2023 and the "kinetic sanctions" in 2024, progressively worsening with now also the Iran war making it worse, the Green's decision is responsible for not just massively worsening Germany's CO2 output but doing so WHILE causing a doubling of energy prices.
4) this total lack of willingness to compromise guarantees yet another fight over global warming in parliament. The Green's party actual politics are: grandstanding and demanding HUGE compromises "in the name of global warming". In reality the tactic is different: they cause big problems, everywhere (nothing on the scale of the nuclear closure, but you'd think they would compromise to ease the effect of the factory closures. The opposite is true). They do this so there's fights, and they appear to be "fighting for global warming". The opposite is closer to the truth.
5) this then caused emergency reactivation of coal power plants ... no objection of the Greens and even a further statement that they WILL NOT COMPROMISE ... okay.
And there's "a lobby" because everyone else points out ... but Green policy, and their total lack of willingness to compromise is responsible for half of Germany's CO2 output, and now $other_party has to compromise to fix that? WTF? Of course the answer? "The lobby is unhinged". Because we all know further Green party policy will only lead to further disaster (for example further destroying the auto industry [1]).
The only thing the Green party sees is a chance for more votes. You will not catch them doing any sort of discussion about policy, or the policy's effects. Just shouting about how necessary it is, fight, distract, obstruct, sabotage. Shout, shout, shout. And every adult in the room realizes what the situation is, but adults don't vote Green in the first place, work in factories, and will soon be fired and unemployed anyway.
I just don't understand how you a political party can be that deeply evil, playing on pure identity politics, willing to damage everything, the climate, the environment, society and politics JUST to get votes and power.
[1] https://www.gruene.de/artikel/merz-draengt-eu-kommission-und...
Yes, the LLM can invent elaborate fantasies for anybody who will listen to it, but everybody actually lives in the real world. In the real world Germany decreased fossil fuel use in its production of electricity both proportionally and in total as you can see in the data.
None of what you wrote addresses the very obviously bogus original claim, probably because to do that you'd have to understand that facts are true which is confusing if you're just generating plausible nonsense.
Conveniently Germany is about 1% of the world population. You realize that if most countries use the same argument nothing ever change? (It's only 1% how can it make a difference)
In fact Spain has less coal now than it did in 2025, or 2024, or 2023 and so on.
And no their grid isn't "near 100% renewable", they do have a lot more than most European countries but they have large gas imports too to run some of their conventional thermal power plants - what they're getting rid of, sensibly, is coal.
There's a 4x seasonal swing between summer and winter for Spain's solar power, and obviously the maximal swing (clear summer's day versus overcast mid-winter) is much larger, but they're nowhere close to being rid of fossil fuels even in July, much less January.
This whole "blackout was caused by renewables" stuff was crap when it was first spouted and didn't get any more plausible once we had more information.
That isn't what it said
> if they never used renewables or not to this extent, this event simply wouldn't have occurred
This is an entirely speculative counter-factual and so is even more useless than it appears.
Coal AFAIK a bigger source of acid rains and world has not stopped using coal.
You'll find articles about every single land mass "warming up faster than average"... that's because the average include the 70% of the planet that is covered by oceans, these don't warm up nearly as fast as landmasses. We're all pretending we'll manage +1.5c or +2c by 2050, and in the average Joe's head that not much, in reality we're already fucked, July was +4c above normals in France, and we're in 2026 not 2025.
Australia is Warming Faster than Global Average: https://www.statista.com/chart/20404/mean-annual-temperature...
China warming faster than global average: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202607/02/WS6a462fd5a310986e...
Europe’s warming accelerates beyond global trend: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/europes-warming-...
Warming in Brazil is already higher than the global average: https://www.wwf.org.br/en/?90683/Climate-Warming-in-Brazil-i...
Africa is warming more rapidly than the global average: https://www.cseindia.org/africa-is-warming-more-rapidly-than...
https://weatherkit.apple.com/alertDetails/index.html?ids=081...
I'd describe it a little differently myself.
Dro(a)ught monitor: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937
Also the efficiency of panels decreases with higher temperatures.
Please don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Berlin is an absolutely miserable place in this weather if you commute or just trying to sleep at night. Like, you can't efficiently cool the apartment down if it's 20 degrees at night and there's no wind.
There was one day it didn't cooled down at nice for this year (when day temperature went close to 40 degrees). Other than that, for I sleep with all windows open and I create an airflow with two fans. The apartment gets cooled during night and during the day I just keep the curtains closed. It hasn't gone above 25 degrees inside the apartment during the day time.
AC is fairly problematic for narrow underground tunnels. This is one upside of the massive 9m diameter tunnels being used for a lot of new underground lines; way easier to ventilate. But, ah, not something you can really retrofit.
It could be worse, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
> Like, you can't efficiently cool the apartment down if it's 20 degrees at night and there's no wind.
I watched a report that has an interview with the CEO of a cereal factory. They get all their wheat via barges. He said they already paid €100k extra this year for low-water surcharges for shipping and that they'd need 6,500 trucks annually if they'd replace the barges with trucks.
I didn't mean short-term bad timing, I mean it's bad that we're getting hit by increasing droughts in the same decade the train system hit its breaking point and needed fixing.
Post pandemic, it was decided that they had to fix it, at the same time that there's been a sustained surge in ridership. The operations to fix the rail network combined with decay, combined with higher ridership than ever before is what causes the chaos.
[0]: https://www.vizugy.hu/?mapModule=OpGrafikon&AllomasVOA=16496...
Today the all-time record in Austria was broken with 40.8°C (105.4°F) in Vienna.
Base load, eh?
Also what you describe is called "Virga".
Energy may well be cheap in the US but you have been paying for that for decades through military misadventures in the middle east.
Texas is probably our national leader in terms of deploying solar and wind power, which feels ironic but is totally rational and logical.
80% of solar panels/batteries/windmills are made in China. We wouldn't even be able to make them without fossil fuels in the first place. Not even talking about the electronics that is needed
This is in stark contrast to fossil fuels, where it's infeasible to stockpile more than a few months of usage, and if suppliers turn off the tap, you're at their mercy almost instantly.
If China stopped supplying solar panels or batteries, it'd spark a frenzy of activity and demand for locally produced replacements, and there would be enough time for those to come online.
Wind power is an incredibly cheap form of power.
Your point about rare earths is more or less covered by my previous comment about solar panels and batteries.
Besides, rare earths is actually a supply chain that's being rapidly de-risked from China as we speak anyways.
Now you're just being funny. The reason Chinese solar outcompeted European solar is because China can produce at a lower cost. Yeah, Germany could theoretically produce solar panels in required quantities. However, the price is going to be higher. Which means electricity is going to be more expensive. And expensive electricity is one of the problems for the German industry. Let's not forget that many enterprises will simply not survive while the solar production is ramping up.
They took over the solar market from Germany after Germany foolishly stopped subsidizing it and almsot overnight killed the thriving domestic solar industry.
Chinas solar panels are almost surely being sold internationally for less than they cost to make. If China stopped selling them and domestic producers sprang back up using techniques they've learned from the ongoing solar panel 'recycling' programs, the domestic solar panels would surely be a lot more expensive than Chinese panels, but they'd also almost certainly be cheaper than fossil fuels, and would find a place in the market.
Besides, the cost of panels isn't even the expensive part of solar installations anymore. The expensive part is the land, grid connections, and installation labour.
In the political reality of Germany there is literally 0 chance that these tax cuts won’t be extended. Low investment by BASF has many reasons, but their inability to get politicians to extend that tax cut isn’t one of them.
Throughout the winter, wind is a bit more random but causes spells of high prices and spells of low prices.
The main thing causing electrical usage prices to be high in Germany is grid charges for the gigantic grid infrastructure buildout.
Germany's electrical grid is one of the most resilient and interconnected in the world, and it's rapidly being upgraded to accommodate the huge build-out of wind, solar, and batteries that is underway. I agree that the government should probably shoulder more of these grid-costs to take some burden off of major industrial users.
I do agree though, that even just having 'normal' energy prices for a developed nation makes it very hard to be an industrial powerhouse.
IMO the only way forward is for Germany to build more energy infrastructure. Most importantly, we need more solar wind and batteries, but we also need upgrades to gas peaker plants, and more long-distance HVDC connections to neighbouring countries to better smooth out variations in weather that are inherent to intermittent renewables.
Doubling down on fossil fuels won't bring down Germany's energy costs.
Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
It'd be even worse if the nukes would be shut down due to lack of cooling water.
> Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet.
Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out.
I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal.
> Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world.
Germany's grid is on average cleaner than the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia's grids. It's only dirty by western european standards, not by the standards of developed countries. Certainly not by world standards.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly
Germany is also on a better decarbonization trajectory than any of those countries other than Australia.
> And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
Those 15 NPPs were not putting out anywhere near your claimed number.
July 2017: 5.3 TWh
July 2018: 6.1 TWh
Julu 2019: 5.4 TWh
July 2020: 4.2 TWh
July 2021: 5.5 TWh
July 2022: 2.9 TWh
Calculated using API data from https://www.energy-charts.info which gives the electricity mix on any given time or day as it evolves every 15 minute interval.
> Also, your claims about the German grid are non-sense. Germany produces several times as much CO2 per watt generated as the US and about 7x more CO2 per watt as France.
I never said anything about France. It does indeed have way cleaner electricity than Germany. The USA does not have cleaner electricity than Germany anymore though according to the source I linked you. Do you have another source you'd like to share?
Some of them are worth keeping but also some of them actually should go. Close to where I used to live in Düsseldorf there was a plastic bottle factory that employed 500 some people and it only continued to be open because it was apparently impossible to let anyone go, the entire thing was long uneconomic.
Mind you even here in Germany our economy is 70% services, the bulk of the employment happens in the Mittelstand. The number of highly energy intensive companies is quite small. Reducing energy prices is good for consumers but more important are structural reforms. We have to good an education and too high a wage level to keep people working in plastic bottle factories. It actually made sense that some of those jobs left the US 30 years ago.
Either, you are not from Germany or your example is a clear MBA-101-Bobo-Textbook example :-D
PL: ~21ct/kWh
LX: ~20ct/kWh
AT: ~19ct/kWh
NL: ~19ct/kWh
BE: ~17ct/kWh
FR: ~16ct/kWh
DK: ~9ct/kWh
Germany: 23ct/kWh (or: about 25% higher than the EU average)[0]
Of course Germany "is mostly in line" if your ideology depends on it.
[0] https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-pr...
If Germany's neighbours don't want to buy cheap or negatively priced electricity, they don't have to.
"Green" supporters prefer renewable energy, because it allows you to build a resilient and distributed network of production, distribution and storage that can't be easily disrupted by any one shock event at the fraction of the cost of nuclear (if you count subsidies and government financed research, not even considering the socialization of insurance against accidents).
Germany has extremely high renewable penetration, and has one of the most stable grids (if not the most) in the world.
By the way: the number of power cuts I have experienced in the past 10 years is 1, because some idiot rammed a powerpole somewhere. The number of times I read about a power cut in the USA somewhere is more or less daily.
Unless there's a revolution in this pricing mechanism the only way for Germany to lower its electricity prices is through renewables build out to push away the more expensive sources.
For those not speaking German: Base price (incl. tax) for the bundle is 210€, plus 60€ shipping, minus 30€ sale, so 240€ for a complete set, including tax and delivery.
[1] https://janrosenow.substack.com/p/pakistan-the-solar-revolut...
[2] https://eu.globalsolar.store/news/78/germany-installs-175-gw...
Solar panels? They gotta fix the brain drain first. Anyone with the capability to bounce understandably does.
The only people with money are Israeli and Qatari real estate investors.
They do. One of the odd fringe benefits of agrovoltaics is that the plants beneath the panel slightly lower the panel temperatures through transpiration.
https://energyfactbook.com/world/electricity-prices-by-count...
Whether it is the best mechanism to incentivize a transition towards renewable energy sources is debatable, but OP at least implies that we’re on the right direction.
At some point we will have enough renewables to turn off the old and expensive gas and coal plants. Until then we just have to live with the feeling that it’s an investment towards future generations.
Perhaps humanities biggest flaw is to prioritize instant gratification over long term benefits.
And as a sidenote, why do people downvote a question rather than answer it? Some of us like answering questions and deadening a question removes that ability.
The American way of handling units is always surprising.
if its just [dead] (no [flagged]), as the case with tyromaniac, that's automated by the site (suspected spam/ai/bot/etc.).
the comment can be vouched for to lose the [dead] status by users with 500+ karma (i think? maybe 1000)
comments don't gain [dead] due to downvoting.
>What does [dead] mean?
>The post was killed by software, user flags, or moderators.
"moderators" isn't referring to just anybody with a downvote capability? They mean just the website owners, e.g. dang, etc.?
12B KWh = 12M MWh = 12,000 TWh?
12B kWh = 12M MWh = 12k GWh = 12 TWh.
Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time
In these scenarios, using more (renewable) electricity actually has no net effect at all, as it is purely from additional production, which is only available because you use it. I live in a region in Germany with a lot of wind and solar and I regularly see my PV plant be capped by the local energy company and the wind turbines around my village standing still despite a stiff breeze. Every kwh I use from my own PV in this case is free energy in the most expansive meaning of the word.
> The IWR explained that Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) operates on a differential cost model for new photovoltaic systems. Under the mechanism, electricity generated by solar installations is first sold on the power exchange, with the resulting market revenues credited to the EEG account. Only the difference between the market price and the statutory feed-in tariff is compensated through the EEG account.
Wait, this is still being subsidized by taxpayers? And Germany has some of the highest energy prices in Europe?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. On the one hand folks are happy to tout solar and wind as "the cheapest energy you can get" and on the other we have the market realities of what consumers and taxpayers are paying. There's a policy failure somewhere if the cheapness to produce energy this way is not being reflected in the market and subsidy structure. Does anyone have an analysis of wtf is going on?
> Grundpreis: 15,54 € / Monat
I'm watching how with more sun, oeko-energy price keeps growing (despite every summer before it was cheaper):
https://www.naturstrom.de/privatkunden/oekostrom/naturstrom-...
> image
> Energiepreise der letzten 12 Monate
And it worked very well, as it started the global solar boom. Because it's not necessary anymore as an incentive, it's slowly getting phased out.
The Einspeisevergütung is not the reason why consumer electricity is expensive in Germany, though. That's more related to our grid.
We are still paying for renewable energy projects agreed in say 2016 for ten years or indeed 2006 for twenty years. The "cheapest to produce" is a fact about new energy not about what it still costs us for things we agreed to in the past.
I don't look at German data but I do stare at UK data a lot and the model isn't so different. In 2015 this country finished "Allocation Round One" of the current mechanism for these subsidies. Offshore wind farms got about £120 per MWh [in 2012 prices] in that auction and by 2016 the first of these wind farms was running. £120 per MWh isn't a good price by today's standards even if it wasn't in 2012 money, but we have to keep paying that price for those wind farms because that's how deals work (unless you're Donald Trump)
This year, in "Allocation Round Seven" offshore wind auctioned for about £65 [still in 2012 prices]. That's still not a great price today, the Solar farms are significantly cheaper, but given that the afore-mentioned Tangerine Palpatine caused gas prices to shoot up this price is actually not uncompetitive. However, that power doesn't actually exist today, the auction was for rights those wind farms will get built over the next year or three and the £65 per MWh power won't be lighting my home until about 2028.
I agree that nuclear should not have been phased out at the very least until coal was gone, but don't make up shit and say that they made up for the nuclear exit by burning more coal, that is untrue. Germany made up for it by building more renewables.
In addition, without the Greens-pushed and initiated renewables subsidies, there would have been basically no big market worldwide for solar manufacturing to even be built out the way it was and all solar tech and industrialization would likely not be as good as it is now.
Are you referring specifically to a German political party?
Because that's a lot of credit to attribute to a single party in a single country.
It might be well deserved, but seeing some supporting data would be nice.
The only other even slightly comparable country is Spain and they don't start until 2006/7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source... where the laws that kick-started that. Under a SPD-Greens government - it wouldn't have happened with the conservatives or (market) liberals, that's clear.
It's true, though. Emotions seem to be clouding your judgment. Renewables could've been replacing coal. Instead, they're making up for the lost nuclear capacity.
I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capcacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal.
That does not however mean that coal usage increased after nuclear was phased out, such a claim is just false.
[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
If you look at the wider trajectory from 2018 to 2025, coal consumption dropped a bit more than normal in 2020, and rebounded a bit in 2021, but the actual trajectory is clear.
Yes, electricity imports increased, mostly from places with clean grids (including France, though less during the summer months where France had drought related shutdowns). I should have mentioned the increase in imports though, that was an important factor.