Germany awards 3.5GW wind tenders as renewable capacity rises

Germany’s Federal Network Agency has published the awards for an onshore wind energy bid, totalling 3.5GW, at the same time as announcing a rise of 21GW in installed renewable capacity at the end of 2025.

The onshore wind tender attracted 905 bids, totalling 8,155MW, and of these, 415 were successful, comprising a capacity of 3,456MW. 

Most of the contracts were awarded to sites in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, totalling 1,093MW across 148 contracts, followed by Lower Saxony at 1,091MW over 133 contracts. The third largest volume of contracts was awarded to projects in Brandenburg, totalling 262MW over 34 contracts.

Klaus Müller, President of the Federal Network Agency, said: “The submitted bid volume of over 8GW represents the highest value ever recorded in a tender. 

“Looking at the entire year of 2025, this means that every tender was thankfully oversubscribed. At the same time, the winning bids have continued to fall compared to the previous round.”

Renewable growth

The same day as the bids announcement, the agency released its preliminary figures on growth in renewable electricity generation capacity in 2025 for Germany. 

Renewable installed capacity increased by nearly 21GW to a total of just under 210GW. This represents a year-on-year increase of 11%, mainly accounted for by solar and wind.

Müller said: “Last year solar power once again led the way in terms of new capacity. Total capacity of 117GW at the end of the year shows good progress has been made towards achieving the expansion targets.”

At 16.4GW, the increase in solar capacity was slightly less in 2025 when compared with that of 2024. Just under half the increased capacity in 2025 was attributable to solar systems installed on buildings, the remainder was accounted for by ground-mounted solar PV systems.

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At the end of 2025, installed solar capacity in Germany totalled 117GW. However, an annual average of 19.6GW of solar capacity still needs to be added in coming years to achieve the expansion target for solar power of 215GW by 2030.

Growth in onshore wind capacity in 2025 of 4.6GW surpassed the previous year’s level of 2.6GW considerably. Most wind turbines were commissioned in North Rhine-Westphalia, with a total capacity of 1.3GW. 

Müller adds that onshore wind caught up significantly last year, though, to achieve total capacity of 68.1GW, with the target for 2030 being 115GW. 

Therefore, he said, Germany needs an average of 9.4GW of new capacity each year to meet this target. Just under 0.6GW of wind energy capacity was registered as being permanently retired. These sites are generally being repowered with higher-capacity installations. 

Planning permission was granted for just under 20.8GW of onshore wind energy in 2025, which again surpasses the high level of the previous year.

Regarding offshore wind, a total of 0.3GW of new capacity was put into operation, with its capacity growth once again less than in the previous year. Installed capacity in the Baltic and North Seas now amounts to 9.5 GW.