Renewables boost in Germany: turning the corner after a bad year?

DAVID TOKE, SEP 15, 2023 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/renewables-boost-in-germany-turning

Germany could be turning a corner after a bad year in 2022 as renewables increase and solar power deployment dramatically increases. 2022 saw coal electricity production increase driven by a mixture of the need to substitute for Russian natural gas and the phase-out of nuclear power. In the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 coal production as a proportion of electricity fell back from 31 per cent to 27 per cent. Renewable energy increased from 48 per cent to 53 per cent. See here.

On top of that solar pv deployment is surging ahead at the rate of over 1 GW a month according to PVMagazine. To put this in context this means that solar pv’s share of electricity production increases by somewhat over 2 per cent per annum. Of course, that’s certainly not enough on its own, but it is a start. Energy Minister Habeck hopes that planning reforms he oversaw will dramatically increase wind power deployment rates. These have been flagging in recent years.

The production of renewable energy is higher in Germany compared to other countries. Rapid progress in renewables growth is set to resume with reforms introduced by the current Government in which the Green Party’s Robert Habeck holds the Economic Affairs and Climate Action portfolio. However Germany is still to recover from the impact of the shutdown of Nordstream 1 gas pipeline from Russia and the big increase in energy costs involved in the pivot away from Russian gas.

Certainly, the embrace of Russia was not a choice favoured by Greens, who argued for energy conservation and renewables instead. But the geopolitical blunder, led by the the SDP’s former Chancellor, Gerhard Schroader, is costing Germany dearly. By contrast there was much greater consensus on phasing out nuclear power after the Fukushima accident in 2011.

The strength of coal interest in Germany has continued, with a completed phase-out now set for 2038. The strength of coal interests in Germany has been much higher compared to the UK because the UK has had (at least in the past) greater availability of cheap gas from the North Sea. Natural gas prices rose for the UK after 2006, but by then most of the coal electricity production had been replaced by natural gas.

There has been a big struggle recently over a heating law. The opposition was fiercely opposed to a mandatory phase-out of gas boilers by 2025. This was ultimately watered down so that, in effect, consumers can still replace gas boilers if there is no provision for local district heating networks.

The provision of district heatimng networks, already a lot more common than in the UK, is to be radically increased. They will be supplied by large-scale heat pumps. It should be mentioned that a law since 2021 effectively bans gas boilers in new buildings – something that is not yet the case in the UK.