Growth in renewable energy in 2025

Year of issue 2026
Date of issue 2026.01.08

The Bundesnetzagentur has today released its preliminary figures on growth in renewable electricity generation capacity in 2025. Renewable installed capacity increased by nearly 21 gigawatts (GW) to a total of just under 210 GW. This represents a year-on-year increase of 11%. The increase is mainly accounted for by solar and wind.

“Last year solar power once again led the way in terms of new capacity. Total capacity of 117 GW at the end of the year shows good progress has been made towards achieving the expansion targets,” said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur. “Onshore wind caught up significantly last year, though, to achieve total capacity of 68.1 GW.”

Solar

At 16.4 GW, the increase in solar capacity was slightly less in 2025 when compared with that of 2024. Just under half the increased capacity in 2025 was attributable to solar systems installed on buildings, the remainder was accounted for by ground-mounted solar PV systems. Whereas in 2024, there had been twice as much new building-mounted as ground-mounted solar capacity. At the federal state level, Bavaria had the most new solar capacity in 2025 with 4.5 GW. At the end of 2025, installed solar capacity in Germany totalled 117 GW. However, an annual average of 19.6 GW of solar capacity would have to be added in the coming years to achieve the expansion target for solar power of 215 GW by 2030.

The Bundesnetzagentur registered about 430,000 new plug-in balcony solar panel installations in its core energy market data register in 2025. These installations account for about 3.2% (0.5 GW) of Germany’s new solar capacity, compared with just 2.5% (0.4 GW) in 2024.

Onshore wind

Growth in onshore wind capacity in 2025 of 4.6 GW surpassed the previous year’s level of 2.6 GW considerably. Once again, the majority of wind turbines were commissioned in North Rhine-Westphalia, with a total capacity of 1.3 GW. Just under 0.6 GW of wind energy capacity was registered with the Bundesnetzagentur as being permanently retired. These sites are generally being repowered with higher-capacity installations. Installed onshore wind capacity totalled 68.1 GW at the end of 2025, with the target for 2030 being 115 GW. Germany needs an average of 9.4 GW of new capacity each year to meet this target.

Planning permission was granted for just under 20.8 GW of onshore wind energy in 2025, which again surpasses the high level of the previous year. The Bundesnetzagentur is likewise expecting an increase in the number of installations commissioned in the coming years.

Offshore wind

In November and December 2025, the most powerful offshore wind turbines to date were put into operation. The turbines in the “EnBW He Dreiht” offshore wind farm in the North Sea have total capacity each of 15 megawatts (MW). Additional identical installations will also soon become operational in this wind farm. In 2025 a total of 0.3 GW of new capacity was put into operation. Growth in offshore wind capacity in 2025 was therefore once again less than in the previous year. Installed offshore wind capacity in the Baltic and North Seas now amounts to 9.5 GW.

Biomass

In 2025 installed capacity from biomass plants remained steady at around 9.2 GW. All the closures that happened throughout the year were compensated for by new plants being put into operation. Biomass plants added new capacity in 2025 of around 55 MW.

Core energy market data register

The Bundesnetzagentur’s figures for 2025 are based on data from the core energy market data register. The figures for December were partly estimated. The figures for the added capacity basically comprise the figures for the installations that are currently in operation less the capacity of the installations that have been retired. Final figures on growth in capacity in 2025 will be published in mid-January 2026 together with the Bundesnetzagentur’s monthly figures at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/899796 (in German).