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[E3 wise]

By Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress
January 3, 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Just weeks after the solar industry installed the one millionth system in Germany, the country's solar trade association announced that the technology accounted for three percent of total energy generation in 2011 — increasing 60 percent over 2010 to 18.6 terawatt-hours (18.6 billion kilowatt-hours).

  Even with changes to the feed-in tariff that have reduced solar photovoltaic installations compared with previous boom years, the sector was still the fastest growing among all other renewable energy sectors in 2011, according to preliminary figures.

This follows data released last week showing that renewable energy accounted for 19.9 percent of electricity production in the country in 2011, growing 16.4 percent over 2010. Meanwhile, overall energy use in the country fell 4.8 percent due to warmer temperatures and increasing efficiency efforts, further boosting the value of solar generation.

Shared by E3wise

[kat74]

That goes to show that slowly but sure countries are taking alternative energy sources seriously. Soon many other countries will follow suit and all power sources will be environment friendly which is all we are fighting for.

[jasserEnv]

While this is undeniably good news, this just shows how much work there is to do to get all energy usage switched over to alternative sources. Considering that Germany has a very proactive program and they only have 20% of their energy use from alternative sources including solar, there is a lot of transition work ahead for a number of years. If we then look at other far less proactive countries and much larger countries like the US that are dragging their feet, I don't see the transition done for 30 or 40 years. With the damage from climate change occurring now, it is astonishing that so many forces still oppose the transition to such a degree.

[Jacob Rockland]

Impressive! I'm glad someone is setting the example!