The electricity production from renewable sources in 2020 amounted to 31 billion kilowatt hours (kWh). This is an increase of 40% compared to 2019. Of the total renewable electricity produced, the largest part was generated with wind turbines, 45%. This is evident from new, provisional figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) on renewable electricity.
Last year, just over a quarter of Dutch electricity consumption came from Dutch renewable sources, against 18 % in 2019. In 2020 electricity production from renewable sources amounted to 31 billion kWh. The year before this was 22 billion kWh.
Largest share from wind energy
Of the total renewable electricity produced, the largest part (45%) was generated with wind turbines, 29% with biomass and 26% with solar panels. The production from wind energy saw an increase of 29% in 2020: from 3.1 kWh (2019) to 13.9 billion kWh.
The completion of the Borssele 1&2 (Ørsted) and Borssele III & IV (Blauwwind) offshore wind projects off the Zeeland coast made a major contribution to this. Thanks to these projects, the installed capacity at sea increased from approximately one thousand megawatts at the end of 2019 to 2,500 megawatts a year later. Onshore, the capacity increased by almost 600 megawatts to 4,100 megawatts by the end of 2020.
Solar and Biomass
The production of electricity from solar panels has increased by more than half in 2020, from 5.3 billion kWh in 2019 to 8.1 billion kWh last year. The increase is directly related to the substantial increase in the installed capacity. The total capacity of solar panels has grown by more than 3 thousand megawatts in 2020 and was estimated at just over 10,000 megawatts at the end of last year.
The production of electricity from biomass grew from 6.0 billion kWh in 2019 to 9.0 billion kWh in 2020, an increase of 49 percent. Electricity from biomass is produced by waste incineration plants by (co-) firing biomass in coal-fired power stations and in combined heat and power plants, and by biogas-powered plants. Source: CBS
