When German renewables go merchant: the asset-level subsidy cliff
1,201 German assets — 7,935 MW — lose EEG support by the end of 2030, and 686 more roll off in 2032 alone. The dates are per-asset, not modelled.
- assets with a dated expiry
- 5,936
- roll off by 2030
- 1,201
- capacity by 2030
- 7,935 MW
- in 2032 alone
- 686
§25 EEG 2023 grants support for 20 years plus the year of commissioning. So a plant commissioned on any day in 2010 is supported to 31 December 2030 and fully merchant from 1 January 2031.
That makes the expiry year a fact rather than an estimate — provided you have the commissioning date. Asset databases generally carry a commissioning year, which fixes the decade and not the year. The German registry publishes the date.
The curve
| Support ends | Assets | Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 51 | 517 MW |
| 2026 | 60 | 529 MW |
| 2027 | 100 | 753 MW |
| 2028 | 93 | 311 MW |
| 2029 | 247 | 1,327 MW |
| 2030 | 493 | 2,059 MW |
| 2031 | 517 | 2,179 MW |
| 2032 | 686 | 2,648 MW |
| 2033 | 427 | 1,830 MW |
| 2034 | 258 | 2,545 MW |
| 2035 | 209 | 1,960 MW |
| 2036 | 252 | 1,706 MW |
Last year of support. Each asset is merchant from the following January. The 2032 peak is the 2011–2012 solar build-out reaching the end of its 20-year tenor.
Source: EEG-Anlagenstammdaten (netztransparenz.de), joined via MaStR. 5,936 assets with a dated expiry.
The wave peaks in 2032 at 686 assets and 2,648 MW — the 2011–2012 solar build-out reaching the end of its tenor. Anyone originating PPAs or buying secondary assets in Germany is looking at a pipeline of counterparties that is knowable years ahead, by name.
Why this is not the whole picture
The statutory tenor is a calculation. What an asset actually did is a measurement, and the two disagree more often than you would expect.
744 German assets were already selling outside EEG support in 2024, and their median commissioning year is 2022 — decades from any expiry date. They opted into unsupported direct marketing rather than ageing out. Screening purely on tenor would miss all of them.
Where measured settlement shows an asset already merchant, that observation should win over the calculated date. On this platform the calculated year is suppressed in exactly that case, rather than printing both and letting the reader reconcile them.
Method and limits
- –Source: EEG-Anlagenstammdaten, the registry file the four German TSOs publish alongside the settlement data. 3,908,164 installations, 99.9% carrying an exact commissioning date.
- –Join:
EEG_Mastr_Nr, the same key as the settlement data, through MaStR to plant-level asset records. 6,024 assets joined; 5,936 carry a usable expiry year. - –Validation: 96.6% of registry commissioning years agree with the independently researched year in the asset database within ±1 year, median difference 0.
- –It is a calculation, not an observation. A plant can leave support early by opting into direct marketing, and a phased site rolls off in stages — both are carried separately rather than averaged.
- –Retirement is not modelled. Only 0.7% of assets carry a retirement date, so nothing here should be read as a forecast of installed capacity.
Every figure above is reproducible from public sources. Screen the underlying assets in the asset screener, pull them through the API, or ask a question at dealmakers@capexatlas.com.
More research
- Germany’s merchant renewables are new, not old
The assets selling without subsidy in Germany are overwhelmingly new plants that never took support, not old plants that ran out of it.
- What we found checking 47,000 European energy assets against published figures
How we reconcile against published national and company figures — and the specific errors that process caught.