Germany continues to establish itself as a world leader of renewable energy

Germany set a new national record for renewable power.

On July 25, the nation met 78% of the day’s electricity demand using renewable energy sources, which exceeded its 74% record that it set last year in May. This was made possible by sunny conditions in southern Germany (where most of the country’s solar panels reside), and storms across northern Europe (most of Germany’s wind turbines have been installed in the north), according to an analysis by Craig Morris, a German energy expert at the Energiewende blog, reported ThinkProgress.

Aside from solar and wind, other renewables have also been big energy contributors.

In Morris’s analysis, he also discovered that on the night of July 22, with no sunlight to produce power, and even with low wind conditions, wind, hydropower, and biomass still managed to generate almost 25% of the nation’s electricity. The energy data that Morris collected for both days was done through the use of an online tool sponsored by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Last year, 27.8% of Germany’s power came from renewable energy, which is up 6.2% from 2000.

Osha Gray Davidson, the author of Clean Break, a book about Germany’s transition to carbon-free energy, told TakePart that it is quite amazing for such a large industrialized nation to obtain 28% of its power from renewables, and that Germany is a good model for America.

As far as world rankings go, even though Germany has not yet achieved the renewable energy goals of Finland, Norway, and Costa Rica (the latter of which managed to run entirely off energy from renewable sources for 75 days), with 80 million people, Germany has a substantially larger population compared to these countries and a larger industrial industry.

As Davidson points out “Manufacturing accounts for much more of the German economy than the American economy, and they have 80 million people — much larger than a country like Denmark, which gets more of its power from renewables but has a much smaller industrial base, and has a population of five and a half million people.”

Compared to Germany’s 28%, the United States generates approximately 13% of its power from renewable energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.