A German wholesale retailer will get about 9 percent of its total electricity needs met through an agreement on rooftop solar installations, utility E.ON said.

German utility E.ON said it was teaming up with wholesale and food retailer METRO Deutschland on a rooftop solar initiative. The utility company said it would install rooftop solar installations on 30 of METRO's wholesale centers across the country, which would offset about 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, each year.

"With the construction of photovoltaic systems in our stores, we are setting a new milestone in our commitment to the use of new energies and to protect the climate," Thomas Storck, the CEO of METRO Deutschland, said in a statement.

The retailer in 2011 established a goal of cutting its CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

U.S.-listed company ReneSola said last week it viewed rooftop solar power opportunities as ripe in the Chinese market. It has more than 130 megawatts of rooftop projects under development across the company and said it wanted to boost that to as high as 200 MW by the end of the year.

Germany has one of the greener economies in Europe. Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered eight of the country's 17 nuclear reactors closed by the end of 2011 following the Japanese nuclear disaster and a total shutdown by 2022. E.ON said it was retooling in the domestic landscape as Germany emerges as a regional leader in renewable energy development.

The company said last year was one of transition marked by an emerging focus on renewable energy.

E.ON's emphasis on transition followed a report from German energy company RWE, which this year marked its shift in the low-carbon direction by working with port officials to create infrastructure to fuel vessels with cleaner-burning liquefied natural gas. RWE said its green energy division, Innogy, put the parent company "on a solid financial basis."

Apart from solar power, E.ON, with support from Norway's Statoil, hosted a ceremony to mark the start of construction for the Arkona offshore wind farm in September. At peak capacity, the Arkona wind farm will be able to meet the energy needs of around 400,000 average households from 2019 onward.

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