Sun ensures a sustainable year: the Netherlands generated much more renewable energy last year | Interior

In addition, a lot less energy was generated in an unsustainable way, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands. The share of fossil fuels fell by 11 percent. In total, 40 percent of the electricity produced here was renewable, i.e. from the sun, wind, biomass or hydropower. This is a total of 47 billion kilowatt hours.

How much electricity can be generated from renewable sources is highly dependent on the weather. In Germany, for example, they noticed that less energy came from sun and wind in 2021, because there were simply less of them. Where 45.3 percent came from renewable sources in 2020, that dropped to 41 percent a year later. And then the low number of hours of sunshine was compensated by the installation of millions of new solar panels.

In 2022, Dutch electricity companies had nothing to complain about. The sun shone more than ever: for the first time more than 2200 hours. The number of solar panels in our country is also increasing rapidly. In 2021 there were about 48 million, and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency expects about 10 million panels to be added last year. Precise figures on this are still being calculated. One in four households now has its own solar power, with which we have the most solar panels in Europe. Worldwide, only Australia has more.

More wind turbines were also built in our country last year, increasing the share of wind energy by 17 percent. The amount of electricity from biomass – also seen as renewable energy – fell from about 10 percent in 2021 to about 9 percent last year.

Another milestone: just as much energy came from natural gas as from renewable sources. That’s for the first time. Particularly due to the high gas price and the war in Ukraine, natural gas use for generating electricity fell by 16 percent.