Germany’s solar panels produced a record amount of electricity this week — a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic, which has drastically reduced air pollution, according to a report.
Photovoltaic plants churned out 32,227 megawatts on Monday, beating the previous record on March 23, as clear conditions are forecast for the rest of the week, according to Time, which cited Germany’s DWD weather service.
“There is hardly a cloud over Germany,” DWD rep Andreas Friedrich told the mag. “And a high-pressure system over Scandinavia will keep these conditions in place until at least Friday.”
But the good green news meant Germany’s coal industry took a hit.
The sunny skies meant solar energy generated as much as about 40 percent of the country’s power Monday, compared to the 22 percent produced by coal and nuclear, according to Agora Energiewende, a think tank funded by the European Climate Foundation.
“Every year there’s more installed solar, so the record gets broken nearly every spring,” BloombergNEF analyst Jenny Chase told Time, adding that fewer flights and cleaner air due to the coronavirus lockdowns may have boosted the supply coming from solar.
Meanwhile, the German government predicts that green power will make up roughly 80 percent of the electricity mix by 2038, compared with just over 40 percent in 2019, the news outlet reported.
“You have coal looking very much like the energy market’s loser,” Carlos Perez Linkenheil, a senior analyst at Berlin-based Energy Brainpool, told Time last week.