Electricity exchange balance Germany 2024

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​published on March 19, 2025

This document is intended to present the complete development and categorisation of Germany's electricity imports and exports and provide an outlook on future developments.

Cross-border electricity trading and reserve power plants (to date)​

In Europe, electricity is traded across borders, which means that it is produced where generation costs are lowest. This promotes efficient trading and the utilisation of cost-effective energy sources across national borders. Electricity imports and exports are therefore unrelated to security of supply.

Germany generally has a high level of security of supply. In the exceptional case of an imminent power outage, conventional reserve power plants are currently available, which serve exclusively as an emergency reserve and may not be used to cushion short-ter​m electricity price peaks. These reserve power plants are only activated when the electricity price reaches €4,000/MWh (for comparison: during the December dark doldrums, the electricity price peaked at €963/MWh).¹ Once the electricity price limit is reached, it will be raised further in the future to take account of market mechanisms (in the past, this limit was sometimes €3,000/MWh). This adjustment is necessary as electricity prices are becoming increasingly dynamic with the expansion of renewable energies. Setting an electricity price cap ensures that the market is not distorted and that pricing continues to follow market principles. In fact, the electricity market is most efficient when it is able to meet demand independently. This enables optimal utilisation of power plant capacities and effective integration of demand flexibility.²

Breakdown of the electricity exchange balance in 2024 by country and energy source

The cross-border electricity trade data for 2024 shows an overall electricity exchange balance of around 28 TWh, which can be regarded as an electricity import surplus. This results from the difference between electricity imports (around 77 TWh) and electricity exports (around 49 TWh). Figure 1 clearly shows that, on balance, Germany imported the most electricity from France, followed by Denmark, Switzerland and Norway, while on balance the most electricity was exported to Austria.

Figure 2 shows Germany's exports and imports with neighbouring countries separately. It can be seen that Germany actually purchased the most electricity from Denmark, followed by France. At the same time, however, Germany exported more electricity to Denmark than to France, which means that net imports from Denmark are lower than net imports from France.

Figure 3 shows the share of energy sources in German electricity imports. In 2024, the share of renewable energies in the electricity mix of the import volume was around 48 percent, followed by energy generation from nuclear power at around 28 percent.
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Figure 1: Data from the Federal Network Agency (SMARD) - The electricity market in 2024^3​

Figure 2: Data from the Federal Network Agency (SMARD) - The electricity market in 2024^​3

​​In order to fully assess Germany's current electricity exchange balance and this year's high volume of electricity imports, it is essential to take a look at the historical development of the electricity exchange balance. This development was largely characterised by the economically attractive expansion of renewable energies and the economically justified shutdown of conventional power plants.

The values of the cross-border physical electricity flows are shown here, which are somewhat lower than those of the cross-border electricity market. This is necessary as the data for the cross-border electricity market will only be available from 2015 with the introduction of market coupling at European level.

Figure 4: Energy charts: Public net electricity generation in Germany | import balance^​4

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​​1990-2000: balanced electricity exchange balance
From 2000: increasing electricity export country

​The expansion of renewable energies, the continued operation of conventional power plants and the initially low or non-existent prices for emission certificates enabled

Germany to produce a large amount of electricity at attractive and competitive prices and export it to neighboring countries.

2017: Maximum electricity exports
From 2017: reduction in electricity exports

Germany has gradually begun shutting down conventional power plants, which is a sensible measure in light of the growing expansion of renewable energies. At the same time, the significantly rising prices for emission certificates are increasingly making it economically more difficult to produce electricity using coal-fired power plants and are therefore also making it more difficult to export electricity economically.

2022: Outlier year

As a result of the energy crisis and the outage of numerous nuclear power plants in France due to malfunctions and maintenance work, electricity prices rose sharply throughout Central Europe. Despite high prices for emission certificates, this enabled Germany to ramp up electricity production from coal-fired power plants again and record a strong export year.

2023-2024: increasing electricity import country​

The shift towards an import surplus observed in the last two years is mainly due to the significant decline in electricity generation from coal-fired power plants and the shutdown of nuclear power plants. On the one hand, these developments are the result of political measures, but on the other hand they are mainly due to the sharp rise in prices for CO₂ emission certificates, which make electricity generation from fossil fuels considerably more expensive. In this context, participation in the electricity market for conventional power plants, such as coal and gas-fired power plants, has become economically less attractive - coal-fired electricity and, in particular, electricity from gas-fired power plants is simply less competitive. In addition, developments in gas prices and the prices of lignite and hard coal must be taken into account, which have shown exceptional volatility and high price levels in the course of the energy crisis in recent years.⁵

Future? - Planned expansion of renewable energies & “back-up” capability

The current high level of electricity imports will not be a permanent situation. With the continuous expansion of renewable energies, we will produce increasing amounts of cheap electricity in the future. At the same time, we are experiencing a so-called 'battery storage tsunami', as SPIEGEL dubbed the development.⁶ The combination of both developments will enable us to export even more electricity in the future (for example, cheap PV electricity, as it is cheaper than fossil or nuclear generation in neighboring countries) and at the same time be less dependent on imports.

Considerations with regard to 2025:

The planned expansion of renewable energies for 2025 is as follows:

• Solar: 15 GW (expected additional generation: +13 TWh)
  
• Onshore wind: 5 GW (expected additional generation: +8.5 TWh)
• Offshore wind: 1.8 GW (expected additional generation: +5 TWh)

Overall, this results in expected additional generation of around 26.5 TWh, which roughly corresponds to the import balance for 2024. Of course, it cannot be assumed that this amount will have a full impact on the import balance, as coal-fired power generation will be reduced at the same time and electricity demand is expected to increase. Nevertheless, this illustrates the direction in which we are heading in the long term.⁷

In order to ensure long-term security of supply in a decarbonized electricity system with an electricity mix consisting almost entirely of renewable energies, a “technology mix with back-up capabilities” is planned in addition to cross-border electricity trading and battery storage capacities. Specific ideas for implementing this are mentioned in the draft “Electricity Market Design of the Future” published by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection in August 2024. In the future, base load generation, which was previously provided by large fossil-fuel power plants, will gradually be replaced by photovoltaic and wind energy plants. Technologies are therefore needed that offer a high degree of flexibility both in the short and long term in order to bridge the hours when neither sun nor wind is available.⁸
Gas-fired power plants are suitable for this purpose as, unlike nuclear or coal-fired power plants, they offer a high degree of flexibility and can be ramped up or down at short notice. They also enable climate-neutral power generation by using green hydrogen as an energy source in the future. This can be produced by electrolysis during periods of particularly high electricity generation from photovoltaic and wind energy. Despite the comparatively high energy losses during this process, the model remains promising, as the demand for electricity is often low during precisely these phases. The conversion of surplus electricity into hydrogen is therefore not only cost-efficient, but also contributes to grid stability.

Development of the prices of emission allowances

The European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS 1) covers all large energy industry plants and other energy-intensive industry plants across Europe. It is a Europe-wide trading system for emission allowances that enables the companies that own them to emit emissions. The aim of the system is to create economic incentives to reduce emissions. Since 2018, there has been a significant rise in prices on this market, making electricity production with conventional power plants increasingly unattractive. Prices are expected to rise further in future due to the decreasing number of available emission allowances.

​Figure 5: Energy charts: Annual exchange electricity prices in Germany | CO2 emission allowances, auction DE⁹

Development of average exchange electricity prices

In 2024, average exchange electricity prices (day-ahead auctions) fell by around 16 percent year-on-year to €79.37/MWh. Compared to the energy crisis year 2022, the decline was as much as around 66 percent​​​​ and compared to 2021, a decline of around 18 percent was recorded. This was despite the fact that import volumes peaked in 2024.

Figure 6 illustrates the exceptionally high average exchange electricity prices in 2022. In this year, electricity prices reached record levels throughout Central Europe, making it economically viable to produce and export electricity from coal-fired power plants despite high emission certificate prices (see export outlier year).

Figure 6: Energy charts: Annual exchange electricity prices in Germany | Day Ahead Auction (arithmetic) (DE-LU) ¹⁰

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Conclusion:

Electricity imports are good. Ultimately, they serve to supply the domestic electricity market in line with the market at times when electricity can be purchased more cheaply abroad. The volumes are clearly manageable. There is no need to worry about security of supply for the power plant fleet in Germany at these times, but all electricity consumers should see this as normal purchasing activity. In the future, we should work on making the European markets even more cooperative in order to ultimately achieve the cheapest electricity in all markets.​

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