The Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) originally came into force in 2000 during the Red-Green coalition government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The act stood for a series of laws that encouraged the generation of renewable electricity through guaranteed feed-in tariffs. It boosted innovation and resulted in the rapid expansion of installed renewable energy capacity, especially wind and solar energy. This photo shows solar panels on the roof of a cowshed in North Rhine-Westphalia. Many farmers today use barn and stable roofs as well as arable land to create an additional source of income by generating solar energy, which is then fed into the electricity grid.
Beginning in 2009, still under Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government with the SPD, the original legislation began to be modified through amendments, including a transition from guaranteed tariffs to a market-based auction scheme. Green politicians and other environmentalists criticized that these amendments slowed Germany’s energy transition and undermined the original intention of the law. Germany currently aims to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2045 and to fulfill all its electricity needs with supplies from renewable sources by 2035.