For example, as I noted Germany needs to get to 35% share of electricity and 18% of final energy consumption by 2020 under the new law.

A simple way that could be achieved would be to have 36% share of electricity and no renewable in all other energy use, and assume that electricity and other energy are the same amount of energy (reality is different). In that case, renewable electricity provides for 36% of half of the total or 18% of total gross final consumption.

And besides from any quibbling about details, I completely agree that this is a success story. You could power quite a lot of countries completely with 665 TWh a year.

Way to nail it!

Love the opening:

Renewable energy generated between 665 and 673 terawatt-hours of electricity in the EU in 2010. With total energy consumption of between 3,115 and 3,175 terawatt-hours, this means that clean energy supplied about 21% of all the EU electricity used in 2010.

In an effective rebuttal to those who constantly pooh-pooh renewable energy capacity as “just nameplate capacity”, the figures were released in terawatt-hours of electricity actually produced and consumed in a year, since power generation is the bottom line for any form of electricity.

The original Directive was of 2001 (as noted at the article you cited). And Directive 2001/77 of 27 September 2001 originally set an overall target of 22%, which was reduced slightly by the Act on Accession of 10 new Member States in 2003 (search for 12003TN02/12/A to find that) to the 21% target.

That Directive has been repealed by Directive 2009/22, which has no targets for the electricity sector, but only a 20% target for the share of renewable in gross final energy consumption in its Article 3.

On a related point, Germany amended Article 1of the law on renewable energy last summer to include legally binding goals of 35% for 2020 and 50% for 2030 (electricity share) as well as 18% for 2020 (gross final energy consumption).