Focus on Germany | Renewables no longer funded via power bills


German consumers will no longer have to pay the renewables surcharge on the power price as of 1 July 2022. The German federal parliament (Bundestag) passed legislation to abolish the renewable levy that households and businesses pay with their power bills, and which was instrumental to fund the country’s expansion of renewable power capacity in the past 20 years. An average German family will save around 300 euros per year as a consequence. Payments to renewable installations will instead be paid for from the state energy and climate fund, which also receives revenue from emissions trading. To ensure that consumers really benefit from the price relief, the law obliges electricity suppliers to transparently lower prices as of July, the federal economy and climate ministry said. The three-party government announced in its 2021 coalition agreement that the


renewables levy, which currently amounts to 3.7 cents per kWh, was going to be abolished by the end of 2022. The idea was to reduce the costs for power so that electric transport and heating (heat pumps) would become cheaper than fossil-fuelled alternatives. However, rising energy prices due to the shortage of Russian gas and the war in Ukraine prompted the government to introduce the measure earlier. Source: Kerstine Appunn, Clean Energy Wire, CC BY 4.0


shows that, with energy security in mind, there is a great will to advance wind energy quickly”, said BWE president Hermann Albers. He added that the upcoming ‘Summer Package’ should ensure that approval procedures for new wind parks are accelerated. “We must significantly reduce the approval period from the current average of six years.”


Andreas Kuhlmann, head of the German Energy Agency (dena), said the proposals represented “a new impetus in energy and climate policy that many have been waiting for.” However, he also said that the measures outlined would not be sufficient to reach the goals the government laid out in its coalition agreement. Parliament would “hopefully” introduce a number of changes, said Kuhlmann.


important, the amendments provide for much higher annual capacity addition targets, to enable the new government goal to be reached of having 80% renewable power (some 600 TWh) in the mix by 2030 and almost 100% by 2035. By 2030, installed onshore wind capacity should reach 115 GW, the government says. Annual capacity additions therefore have to reach 10 GW as of 2025. Solar PV installations will amount to 22 GW per year as of 2026 to achieve a total capacity of 215 GW by the end of the decade. Offshore wind additions are also to be increased, reaching a minimum of 30 GW per 2030, 40 GW by 2035, and 70 GW by 2045. While the government wants to incentivise the production and use of biomethane in highly flexible power plants by increasing tender volumes, the use of biomass will be prioritised for transport and industrial applications rather than power production.


In light of the war in Ukraine and the urgent need to become independent from imported fossil fuels, the ministry has increased renewables targets again compared to a first proposal made in February 2022.


To ensure that the ambitious growth scenarios presented in the Easter Package are not hampered by lengthy planning procedures, local opposition and contradictions with other protected goals, the government adopts the principle that the use of renewables is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved. To this end, the economy and climate ministry together with the environment ministry have already presented a new compromise that aims to reconcile bird protection with wind energy expansion.


With new rules for the distances between wind turbines and weather radar installations as well as rotating radio beacons – which so far prevented the building of new wind parks in their vicinity – some 5 GW of potential onshore wind capacity can be freed up, allowing around 1200 new wind turbines to be built within a short time, economy and climate minister Robert Habeck said. To achieve higher acceptance in the population, citizen energy initiatives will be


exempt from participating in tender schemes and it will be made easier for local communities to benefit financially from wind parks and ground- mounted solar PV nearby.


In addition, the Easter Package also includes changes to federal grid planning. In general, all future power network planning is to be undertaken to achieve a climate-neutral grid in the most efficient way; and to ensure that the grid will keep up with renewables expansion. Initially, 19 new grid expansion projects will become part of the federal grid requirement plan, and another 17 will be amended to best serve the energy industry. To make grid planning and building faster – Germany lags behind with its grid expansion plans by several years – permitting procedures are to be simplified and hurdles reduced, the government says.


Industry reactions


While renewables expansion would receive a significant boost through the package, the drafts did not address grid expansion sufficiently, said Tim Meyerjürgens, COO of power transmission grid operator TenneT. Both would be needed to make the energy transition a success. “We had introduced further important procedural simplifications into the discussion, but we still see too little of this in the current draft law for a significantly accelerated grid expansion on land and at sea in the future,” said Meyerjürgens. The renewable energy industry welcomed the proposals as a first step, but called for changes in the legislative process. “We still see a need to make adjustments across all renewable energies. These changes must be made with the summer package at the latest”, said renewables association BEE president Simone Peter. BEE highlighted shortcomings on solar power. “The solar targets set out in the cabinet draft can only be achieved if the government makes self-supply and direct supply with solar power significantly more attractive and provides sufficient site areas for solar parks,” said Peter.


Wind energy association BWE said the Ukraine war and the wish to become independent of Russian fossil fuels has provided an extra push to renewables development. “[The Easter Package]


22 | May 2022| www.modernpowersystems.com


Greenpeace Germany welcomed the package. “Habeck’s legislative package is more resolute than anything we have seen on this in recent years,” said the NGO’s Reenie Vietheer, but suggested that citizens’ energy had received too little attention. German environmental umbrella organisation DNR called the package “a first important step” towards energy sovereignty through wind and solar power. DNR president Kai Niebert called for adjustments in the parliamentary process. “Among other things, we need the introduction of a solar obligation on all roofs, the abolition of arbitrary distance requirements to residential settlements and the accompanying provision of sufficient areas for onshore wind energy,” said Niebert. Source: Clean Energy Wire, CC BY 4.0


Warm welcome from Enercon


Not surprisingly the Easter Package was warmly welcomed by onshore wind turbine manufacturer Enercon, which saw it as a “sign of a new beginning.” “After years of a slumping market, a wind energy renaissance in Germany is finally in sight – which makes us very glad,’ said Enercon CEO, Dr Jürgen Zeschky. But it will need “a big effort from all actors involved in the wind energy sector to distribute the risks caused by increasing material costs and disruptions along the supply chain to broad backs.” The picture shows the first installation of Enercon’s new box-shaped E-nacelle (into which all the electrical equipment is integrated). This replaces Enercon’s familiar ‘egg-shaped’ nacelle. The E-160 EP5 E3 shown here, capacity 5.56 MW, is one of three being erected at a wind farm in Hämelhausen, Lower Saxony, for operator M+S Wind.


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