Over the last 30 years, Germany increased it's share of renewable energy from around 4% to 46%. One of the sources of the steady increase is the broad ownership structure, which makes the German model kind of exceptional. Here is what it looks like. THREAD

In 2020, around 30% of the installed RES capacity is owned by private individuals, 10% by farmers, 13% by business, 14% by project developers, 14% by fonds or banks, and only 17% (!) by traditional energy utilities.

This did not just evolve in the last couple of years. In fact, the diversification of ownership is a key characteristic existing from the beginning of the more ambitous RES policy in Germany from 2000.

However, there are relevant differences across technologies: Biogas plants for instance were mainly built by farmers.

PV on the other hand is additionally strong in the business and industry sector, as well as private individuals.

Wind onshore on the other hand sees much higher shares also from project developers, fonds/banks and utilities, while farmers or business is only marginally invested. Still, private individuals are the biggest group of owners (39%).

Wind offshore instead is unsurprisingly much less diversifed, with big utilities (58%) and fonds/banks (40%) basically sharing the whole cake. Also hydro, which had reached its full potential already before 2000, is predominantly owned by traditional utilities.

So in summary, the ownership structure has only been gradually changing over the years, although big investors are slowly but steady gaining market shares.

But why is diversification of ownership important? It is important, because it ensures broad political support in times of legislative change. As technologies evolve quite quickly, also market design and financing schemes need to be adopted regularly.

Germany's renewable energy law alone was (substantially) revised six times over the last 20 years. Furthermore, there are numerous other legislations and process on market design, grid infrastructre etc. that had relevant effects.

However, there are also voices arguing that this kind of political support came with too high cost for power consumers. And indeed, especially the first years of renewable support scheme (FITs of 50 cent/kWh for PV, lots of biomass) clearly raise electricity bills significantly.

Is this model of diversification also expected to exisit in the future? Clear answer: Yes. If Germany wants to reach climate neutrality by mid-century, you need all ownership groups to exploit the different renewables potentials, both in the power sector (graph below) and beyond.

In case you want to read on, feel free to check out our work on Germany's climate neutrality plans: https://static.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin2/Projekte/2020/2020_10_KNDE/A-EW_193_KNDE_Executive-Summary_EN_WEB_V111.pdf

Also big thanks to @RenewsTweet who regularly provide the ownership data to the public.