German Chancellor Merkel has commented on the “leading position of Germany in the renewable energy world market”. She wants to keep and increase that lead. See this report at Manager Magazin (in German).
That’s nice to hear.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Germany has set a new negative record for new solar installations. In February, for the first time in eight years, less than 100 MW of new solar capacity was installed (Klimaretter).
These numbers mean that new solar capacity has dropped by 75% in only about two years.
I am not sure how that is “keeping and increasing” the world wide lead Germany still enjoys in cumulative solar installation. That lead will go to China shortly, they are expected to add 17.8 GW this year alone.
Since there are considerably more Chinese than Germans, the world lead in per capita installations will take a couple of years longer to go.
That’s good news for Chinese manufacturers of solar panels. With a strong domestic market, they will be able to keep and increase the lead the Chinese industry has.
Lenz Blog 
Dear Professor,
Merkel’s statement was “leading position of Germany in the renewable energy world market”.
You reduce this to PV and ignore that windpower is the backbone of REs in Germany – and will very likely be in future.
In most German RE scenarios PV has a share of annual electricity generation of 15-25%, in contrast, wind is usually in the 50-70% range.
Another aspect is, that German wind turbine producer play in a quite different league than German PV companies.
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It is true, I have only discussed solar in this (short) post. But destroying solar is not compatible with the idea of “keeping Germany’s lead”, even if wind was not damaged at all.
That is not true either. The transition to auction models will come next for wind as well, and wind is massively damaged by new legislation on keeping distances to buildings in Bavaria. The corridor of 2.5 GW is also quite lacking in ambition, to say the least.
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