Germany has hit a new clean energy milestone

So far this year, Germany has gotten more electricity from renewables than from any other single source, 27.7 percent. That (just barely) beats the 26.3 percent of power generated by lignite coal, according to Agora research organization.

Wind accounted for 9.5 percent of the power fed into the country’s grid in the first nine months of 2014, biomass for 8.1, solar for 6.8 percent, and hydropower for less than 4 percent.

Last year, Germany got 24.1 percent of its electricity from renewables, so it’s up more than 3 percent. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is aiming to get as much as 60 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean sources by 2035, even while phasing out nuclear power by 2022.

The U.S., by contrast, thanks to a broken and corrupt political system and a greedy do nothing congress, got just 6 percent of its electricity from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal last year, and other 7 percent from hydro.