Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche wants to significantly change the expansion of renewable energy sources. “The energy transition is on a crossroads,” said the CDU politician in Berlin on Monday while she presented the monitoring report she commissioned to the energy transition. “In order for it to succeed, reliability, security of supply, affordability and costly to the energy system for our business location must focus on.” Riche presented ten key measures for this. Among other things, energy policy decisions should not generate misjudgment or over -regulation, but would have to rely on the market, variety of technology and innovation. Renewable energies should be promoted in terms of market and system. Existing grants would have to be tested to the test, subsidies. In a strategy paper from the Ministry of Economic Affairs it says that climate neutrality and competitiveness should not be opposites. Almost 60 percent of the electricity already came from renewable energies. “We want to reach 80 percent by 2030, we stick to that,” said Reiche. However, alternatives and additions to solar and wind energy are needed as security- i.e. memory, batteries, biomass, hydropower and gas power plants that could later be converted to hydrogen. Security of pension and affordability have not been sufficiently taken into account for too long. “However, the fixed feed -in tariff for new systems is abolished. Instead, differentiated financing models are introduced in accordance with European requirements.” The addition of storage and renewable energies must be controlled spatially, depending on the need. “In this way, the usable feed -in can increase and the network expansion can be optimized as required.” When expanding the network, the use of overhead lines offers the possibility of considerable savings compared to underground cables. “Constant projects are not affected.” The minister apparently wants to reduce the expansion of wind turbines at sea: “By optimizing offshore expansion, network connection lines can save and the costs are reduced by up to 40 billion euros.” More emphasized to the Themada’s Ministry of Economic Affairs that Germany must plan with realistic power consumption. The need scenarios were moved in a size of 600 to 700 terawatt hours for 2030; “It can be assumed that the electricity requirement at the lower end” .ccs “establish as a climate protection technology” with the monitoring report on energy policy had commissioned rich external specialists. The energy management institute at the University of Cologne (EWI) and the consulting company Bet Consulting should check the expected electricity requirements as well as the status of network expansion and expansion of renewable energies on the basis of already available studies. Power works and energy generators should also benefit from it, said Reiche. She wants to “establish CCS as climate protection technology”. Departure, storage or the use of CO₂ is “indispensable for decarbonization”. CCS stands for carbon capture and storage: carbon dioxide or CO₂ is not expelled into the atmosphere, but isolated and then permanently stored in deep geological layers of rock. However, the technologies are still in its infancy and have so far been very expensive. Lob from the industrial energy -intensive industry welcomes the plans of the Minister of Economic Affairs. “The energy transition is no longer on course,” said Wolfgang Große Entrup, managing director of the Association of Chemical Industry (VCI), on Monday. “We need a noticeable change of course.” Againability must play a central role again. With renewable energies, it should no longer be just about quantity. “Capacities alone use little if they are sometimes not or inefficient – for example when there are storage far away from the production.” The BDI industrial association also praised the reform package. It was the foundation for a much more efficient energy system, while criticism came from the Greens who had headed the Ministry of Economic Affairs until the beginning of May. It is feared that Reiche wanted to slow down the energy transition, said Michael Kellner, spokesman for the Green Group for Energy Policy in the Bundestag. “The electricity requirements in Germany will increase significantly in the coming years, not least through data centers, electric cars and further electrified production in industry. This requires cheap, clean electricity.” The expansion of the renewable sinks the prices on the market. “The more renewable we expand, the smaller the need for expensive gas power plants.” Each solar system, heat pump and every electric car make Germany more independent of oil and gas from abroad. Criticism of the Environment Minister The Plans of Reich should not be undisputed in the black and red government. Environmental and climate minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) recently warned against stepping onto the brakes during green electricity. An inflexible power grid, lack of storage capacity and slow digitization lead to extreme price fluctuations and high costs. In addition, the expansion of solar and wind energy, for example, is subsidized annually with a double-digit billion-dollar amount from the federal budget. Around 16 billion euros are planned for the year 2025.Million of solar systems, for example, feed the electricity at lunchtime and not during the needs in the morning and evening. The result is record prices when the sun and wind fail to fail, and negative prices for an oversupply. In 2024, Germany also spent around 2.8 billion euros for the so -called redispatch. These are interventions by the network operators, in which power plants receive money to get their production up or down.
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