Germany’s Energiewende will not succeed “fast and easy”, and the country’s energy supply will continue to depend on lignite for some time, said Brandenburg’s state economy minister Albrecht Gerber in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung. “I do know that ...
Siemens is considering the sale of its struggling business that produces gas turbines for power plants, according to people familiar with the matter, report Oliver Sachgau and Eyk Henning for Bloomberg. But a final decision has not yet been made, and the ...
Uber will expand its Berlin fleet with electric vehicles this fall, according to an article in Handelsblatt. Since March, the controversial ride-sharing company has been chauffeuring its Munich customers with roughly 30 battery-powered cars. In light of ...
Replacing Germany’s renewables surcharge with a tax-financed energy transition fund could help to distribute the financial burden associated with expanding low-carbon energy sources more fairly, a study commissioned by the Federation of German Consumer ...
Major German power companies have protected themselves against the sharp increase in ETS carbon emission prices, report Vera Eckert and Nina Chestney for Reuters newswire. RWE has said that its CO 2 position is financially hedged until the end of 2022. ...
Coalition talks between CDU, CSU, FDP and Green Party will be about the parties’ ability “to make something constructive of the differences”, said chancellery chief and Christian Democrat Peter Altmaier in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD ...
The Renewable Energies Agency has published the 2016/17 status report on the energy transition in the individual German federal states. “The federal states have an important ‘hinge function’ and can significantly advance the Energiewende through setting ...
19 Mar 2019, 13:57 Benjamin Wehrmann Climate & CO2 Cars Clean Energy Wire Retrofitting manipulated diesel cars with hardware that reduces their output of harmful nitrogen oxide (NOx) can greatly increase a vehicle’s fuel consumption and, consequently, ...
One of the last minute changes to the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) reform could boost local use of solar power, with profound consequences for the German energy market, reports Manuel Berkel in bizz energy. Power that tenants use from a PV array installed ...
No matter who will govern Germany after this week’s election, a coalition agreement that does not include a commitment to address a phase-out of coal-fired power production “would be a bad sign”, Julian Schwartzkopff writes on euractiv.com. The technology ...
German utility EnBW has announced third quarter results, saying earnings were up and its balance sheet was “significantly stronger”. It says for the first time since 2010, it expects its operating result to rise again in 2017, crediting the consolidation ...
19 Mar 2019, 13:51 Benjamin Wehrmann Climate & CO2 Government Tagesspiegel German environment minister Svenja Schulze has renewed her call for a price on CO2 emissions, arguing it would be one of the most efficient ways to reduce the transport and ...
30 Nov 2018, 15:00 Julian Wettengel Clean Energy Wire 91tv Climate & CO2 Fossil fuels Cost & Prices Tagesspiegel / dpa German finance minister Olaf Scholz said it is “perfectly clear” that the German government will have to invest much more money ...
The construction of new offshore wind farms is revitalising German communities on the North Sea coast, Stefan Reccius reports for Handelsblatt Global. Wind turbine technicians are filling hotels that had been suffering from a decline in tourism and ...
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called on European political decisionmakers to support her country in fighting climate change in a guest commentary in Tagesspiegel. Climate change is not just theory, but a reality that manifests itself, for ...
29 Nov 2018, 16:30 Benjamin Wehrmann Clean Energy Wire 91tv Climate & CO2 Politics Society Süddeutsche Zeitung French President Emmanuel Macron might have made several mistakes when introducing a new tax on petrol and heating oil but “he shows a level ...
Electricity consumers will likely see rising costs for the support of renewable energies with a possible increase of the renewables surcharge to 7.5 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh) by 2025, compared to the current 6.35 cents/KWh, according to a new ...
The introduction of auctions for new wind power projects off the German coast will lead to a significant fall in costs for the industry, Andreas Mihm and Hemut Bünder write in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Foreign companies – as well as major ...
The recent boost in value of utility RWE’s shares comes as a blessing for many cities and municipalities in RWE’s home state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Jürgen Flauger writes in the Handelsblatt. The increase in value of almost 70 percent since the ...
Germany’s public utilities will be at the forefront of implementing the decentralised energy supply required by the Energiewende, Katherina Reiche, director of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU), said in an interview with Welt kompakt. Reiche ...
Germany’s role in international climate protection demonstrates that the energy transition can be an economic success story, state secretary in the economy ministry (BMWi) Rainer Baake said at the presentation of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) ...
German energy company RWE has the right to clear the Hambach Forest and continue lignite mining in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), website klimaretter.info reports. Authorities issued a license for RWE, after mining and logging ...
Two-thirds of Germany’s solar heat installations could have a higher output if their use was optimised, the energy customer consultancy co2online says in a press release. Solar heat users miss out on 1.4 billion kilowatt hours per year, roughly equivalent ...
Germany’s largest carmaker VW has announced that it will invest 100 million US dollars in a US company that specialises in the production of “ super batteries,” Hanna Decker writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The company named QuantumScape ...
The ongoing conflict between anti-coal protesters and energy company RWE at the Hambach Forest is but one of several recent examples that illustrate the indecisiveness of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fourth government coalition, Germany’s largest tabloid, ...
The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) began construction on a new single-tank test facility for thermal energy storage in molten salt (TESIS). “Energy storage is key for the energy supply of the future,” writes DLR in an article. “The research at the DLR is ...
The long-time rival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former parliamentary group leader of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, Friedrich Merz, provided the first details on his candidacy to become chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in ...
A 2-billion-euro fund should be created to assist German cities in the adaptation to climate change, Annalena Baerbock, chairwoman of the Green Party, says in an interview with the Neue Ruhr Zeitung. This money could be used not only to make agriculture ...
The joint power-to-gas (PtG) project by power and gas transmission grid operators Amprion and Open Grid Europe (OGE) should not come as a surprise, as especially the gas industry worries about its future in a decarbonised Germany, writes Andreas Mihm in ...
21 Feb 2019, 13:35 Rachel Waldholz Clean Energy Wire 91tv Freight taz The EU’s first-ever emission standards for trucks and buses, announced this week, are not enough for real climate protection, writes Bernhard Pötter in a commentary for the daily ...
02 Jun 2016
02 Jun 2016, 00:00 Sören Amelang Kerstine Appunn Clean Energy Wire 91tv Süddeutsche Zeitung “Failure desired” Germany, the homeland of the energy transition, treats renewables like a relative who annoys everyone with permanent demands, writes Michael ...
31 Jan 2019, 13:19 Expert CDU- Christian Democratic Union Christlich Demokratische Union Policy Elections & Politics Julian Wettengel Clean Energy Wire 91tv Coal Deutschlandfunk Coal state Saxony’s premier, Michael Kretschmer (CDU), expects decisions ...
The national alignment of expansion costs for Germany’s power transmission grid- a core energy policy demand of eastern German states- could fall prey to dispute between the ruling social democratic (SPD) and conservative (CDU/CSU) parliamentary groups, ...
Green Party energy expert Ingrid Nestle says renewable power plants are not responsible for record grid management costs, which according to the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) amounted to 1.4 billion euros in 2017. “I warn against making renewables a ...
In a parliamentary debate, representatives of the centre-left SPD and Greens again called on Peter Altmaier, the federal minister for economic affairs and energy, to set a date for the promised special auctions for a combined 4 gigawatts of solar ...
17 Apr 2019, 13:19 Kerstine Appunn Transport Clean Energy Wire The highest administrative court of the state of Baden-Württemberg has ruled that state governments must retain diesel driving bans in their clean air plans if pollution limits exceed the ...
11 Mar 2019, 14:09 Benjamin Wehrmann Transport Society Clean Energy Wire / Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung Leading German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has called for a substantial shift in strategy for the tourism industry to make sure that ...
After several hours of negotiations on diesel emissions and immigration, the federal government coalition also agreed that it would decide to implement special renewables auctions “to contribute to closing the gap in the 2020 climate target” in a cabinet ...
Solar power costs are falling so rapidly that the technology will replace fossil fuels like coal much faster than previously forecast, Jess Shankleman and Hayley Warren say in an article for Bloomberg. According to an outlook by Bloomberg New Energy ...
Germany’s social democrat economy minister Sigmar Gabriel has rejected ideas of coalition partner CDU to phase out the support of renewables, Dow Jones Newswires and Spiegel Online report. The CDU “should think this over. I don’t think it’s going to work, ...
An agreement reached by Japan and China to set up a common standard for e-car charging technology could topple the Combined Charging System technology pushed for by German car companies, Welt Online reports. Japanese consortium Chademo and the China ...
The average successful bid in Germany’s first tender for offshore windparks was “far below expectations” at 0.44 cents/kWh, according to the Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA). “Offshore wind energy emphatically demonstrates its competitiveness,” said the ...
Bavarian state premier Markus Söder and his ministers are planning to expand existing measures, such as building insulation, support for community climate action, and growth of renewable energies, in order to fight climate change, they announced after a ...
German wind power companies should not repeat the solar industry’s mistakes, and need to focus more on international markets, Kathrin Witsch writes in an opinion piece for Handelsblatt. Germany’s renewables auction system and a general drop in support ...
Municipal shareholders have stressed the importance of utility RWE ’s dividend payouts to the communal coffers at the company’s annual general meeting, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports. CEO Martin Schmitz’s speech was repeatedly interrupted by ...
Germany’s environment minister Svenja Schulze has reiterated her opposition to the clearing of Hambach Forest for the expansion of a nearby lignite mine while the country’s coal exit commission discusses the end of the fossil fuel in Germany, the ...
07 Mar 2019, 13:38 Benjamin Wehrmann Clean Energy Wire 91tv Transport Cars Welt Online The EU Commission has criticised the German government for not making sufficient progress on setting up a countrywide network of service stations offering charging ...
A poll commissioned by the German oil and gas producer Wintershall and carried out by pollster Forsa reveals that 54 percent of German respondents believe that natural gas is the best supplement to renewables, compared to 22 percent for timber, 20 percent ...
Gas-fired power plants could replace their coal-fired counterparts without endangering the power supply, according to a new study commissioned by RWTH Aachen University on behalf of the German natural gas industry, Die Welt reports. According to the study ...
Challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent promise that Germany will find ways to meet its 2020 climate targets, nine analysts and researchers contacted by Bloomberg have said that the country will probably fail in its efforts, report Mathew Carr, ...
German customers are being misled by inaccurate labelling of the origin of their electricity, the energy provider LichtBlick writes in a press release. Suppliers are obliged by law to indicate an averaged share of green electricity in their tariffs, even ...
10 Dec 2018, 13:58 Benjamin Wehrmann Clean Energy Wire 91tv Fossil fuels Business & Jobs Westfälische Nachrichten The end of coal-fired power production in Germany will pose great challenges for the country’s most populous state, North Rhine ...
Twenty municipalities along the planned route for HVDC (high-voltage direct current) transmission lines to carry wind power from northern Germany to industrial centres in the south, have requested they be constructed as overhead cables rather than buried ...
In the aftermath of Dieselgate, Germany should not make the same mistake with regard to the energy transition by phasing out a technology without having enough alternatives, writes Nikolaus Doll in an opinion piece for Welt Online. This would be ...
Germany will likely miss the 2020 EU goal to increase the renewables share of gross final energy consumption to 18 percent (currently 14.6 percent), according to projections by the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE). “While 23 EU member states ...
The proportion of building construction costs that falls on interior work like thermal insulation in houses is rising in Germany, Bernd Freytag writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Depending on the definition, thermal insulation in line with the ...
14 May 2019, 13:06 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars Technology Clean Energy Wire Heavyweight carmaker Volkswagen has announced the launch of a battery cell production facility that will be operated in partnership with another company. In the framework of the ...
04 Mar 2019, 13:33 Rachel Waldholz Cars Hydrogen Business & Jobs Clean Energy Wire / The Daily Telegraph / Die Welt / Deutsche Welle German carmakers are planning a major investment in electric vehicles over the next three years, the German ...
Conflict of interests between wind power production and wildlife protection is “marginal if we look at the alternatives,” the head of the German Green Party’s parliamentary group, Anton Hofreiter, says in an opinion piece for Der Tagesspiegel Online. ...
German energy company RWE will breach the law if it continues to press ahead with the clearing of the Hambach Forest in western Germany to expand its nearby lignite mine, environmental NGO Greenpeace says in a press release. According to a legal opinion ...
US president elect Donald Trump’s negative comments on wind power in a recent interview with the New York Times present a concern for both the domestic and international wind sector, writes Franz Hubik in Handelsblatt. “Trump made clear that climate ...
04 Mar 2019, 13:24 Benjamin Wehrmann Wind Technology Tagesspiegel The plan to build an artificial island in the North Sea that will serve as a hub for offshore wind turbines with a capacity of more than 100 gigawatts is making good progress, Pieter van ...
G20 governments put four times more money into fossil energy generation than into renewables- despite their official commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement’s aims, NGOs including WWF, Urgewald and Friends of the Earth say in a press release. In a ...
Power generation from coal, oil and gas, and transport produce the largest share of emissions in the vast majority of G20 countries and none of these economies’ climate pledges are on a 1.5˚C-compatible pathway, according to the Brown to Green Report 2018 ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the parliament (German Bundestag) to find an agreement on national power grid fee alignment before the summer break, said economy minister Brigitte Zypries at the German energy industry conference BDEW Congress in ...
The introduction of auctions for wind power support with the recent Reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) will lead to more turbines being built in German forests, writes Andreas Macho in WirtschaftsWoche. Only the most cost-effective wind parks would ...
Germany no longer is among the countries most engaged in advancing climate protection, Werner Rätz, co-founder of global justice group Attac Germany says in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau. This year’s G20 host is advancing its energy transition ...
With more cooperation on energy infrastructure, European states could counter the risks associated with fluctuating supply of wind power, Ralph Diermann writes on Spiegel Online. According to a study in Nature Climate Change, variable weather conditions ...
Old wind turbines in Germany must be refurbished and modernised to ensure that the country meets its 2030 goal of increasing the share of renewables to 65 percent of power consumption, the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) says in a press release. The ...
A German coal exit is unlikely to be introduced in the foreseeable future if a coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU), Christian Socialists (CSU) and Free Democrats (FDP) take over the federal government after the September elections, writes klimaretter ...
Germany and Norway have started construction on NordLink, the first direct power line between the two countries that will allow the exchange of renewable energy from 2019 on, reports dpa. The 620 kilometre long, mostly underwater transmission line showed ...
11 Jul 2019, 14:00 Julian Wettengel Climate & CO2 Elections & Politics ARD / Handelsblatt / Zeit Online German media commentators described Ursula von der Leyen, candidate for the European Commission presidency and German defence minister, as ...
05 Dec 2018, 13:48 Expert VW- Volkswagen Transport Cars Sören Amelang Clean Energy Wire 91tv Cars Handelsblatt Carmaker VW is planning the climate-neutral production of its upcoming electric model ID Neo, which is the successor to the company’s best ...
10 May 2019, 13:26 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars Start-ups Clean Energy Wire German E-car start-up e.GO has started to deliver its compact car model e.GO Life in a bid to stir up the country’s automotive industry with its low-price electric vehicle. The company ...
German automotive supplier Bosch will enter into partnership with United Kingdom-based Ceres Power to develop solid-oxide fuel-cell (SOFC) technology, which could be used in cities, data centres, and factories and as a power source for electric vehicle ...
The commission tasked with managing Germany’s coal power phase-out has softened its stance on reducing coal emissions, Silke Kersting and Klaus Stratmann write for Handelsblatt Online. An earlier version of the strategy paper said Germany must reduce coal ...
The likely new coalition government in Germany’s most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) seems to aim for watering down energy efficiency standards for new buildings, Environmental Action Germany (DUH) said in a press release. During ...
Climate change is largely kept out of the election campaign in Germany for allegedly being too abstract and distant, but that is a flawed notion and points at a grave failure of both the media and politics, Maximilian Probst and Daniel Pelletier write in ...
German carmakers Mercedes and Audi enter the e-car market with two e-SUVs, but instead of contributing to reducing emissions in the country’s transport sector, these big and heavy vehicles might even worsen the sector’s climate impact, Christian Wüst ...
A project in Hamburg combines dozens of old e-car batteries to form a large power storage plant in the city’s industrial port, industry newspaper THB reports. Carmaker BMW, Bosch and energy company Vattenfall jointly operate the project, called Battery 2 ...
The German solar industry is confident that the country’s renewables expansion targets and the growing impact of energy storage solutions will boost the sector’s progress, Welt Online reports. Carsten Körnig, head of the German Solar Industry Association ...
03 Apr 2019, 12:11 Julian Wettengel Climate & CO2 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / Frankfurter Rundschau Germany’s largest emissions drop since the 2009 recession is a success, but it should not be overvalued considering the country’s ambitious ...
The diesel emissions fraud scandal has given impetus to calls for a swift transition to electric cars in Germany, but despite great technological progress, the technology continues to be too expensive and impractical to replace conventional cars, ...
25 Jan 2017
Due to a huge switch from coal to gas power generation, EU power emissions fell 4.5 percent last year, according to an analysis by energy think tanks Sandbag and Agora Energiewende*. “Year-on-year, coal generation across Europe fell by 12 percent, whilst ...
Wind power operators might have manipulated the output of their installations for many years in order to receive a higher guaranteed remuneration via the renewables surcharge paid by power customers, Jakob Schlandt writes in Hamburger Abendblatt. Germany ...
The development of power prices in Germany will have a big impact on the lifespan of wind turbines that are more than 20 years old and therefore no longer offer the guaranteed electricity price to investors mandated by Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) ...
The government has postponed at the last minute the official start of the phase-out commission for the third time. The official launch was removed from the cabinet agenda only hours before the meeting was due to start. The coal commission – officially ...
French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to introduce a high price on CO₂ emissions in the European Union would give France an “enormous competitive edge” over Germany, as his country’s energy supply is based mostly on emission-free nuclear and hydro ...
The German government’s ‘ Climate Protection Report ’ is a “testimony of failure,” writes Michael Bauchmüller in a commentary for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The truth is that this government no longer dares to pursue a serious climate policy. […] It ...
11 Jan 2019, 13:55 Benjamin Wehrmann Clean Energy Wire 91tv Cars Cities Kieler Nachrichten The northern German city of Kiel is about to test an extraction system that removes nitrogen oxide (NOx) from the atmosphere to reduce pollution and avoid driving ...
29 Mar 2019, 14:09 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars Business & Jobs International Clean Energy Wire German carmaker Daimler has teamed up with China’s Geely to develop the Daimler brand Smart into a “leader in premium-electrified vehicles,” the companies say in ...
Until now, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has not been the driving force behind climate protection, and if the party continues to govern with the Social Democrats (SPD) after this year’s election, a rapid coal exit would be a real surprise, Birgit ...
German heating costs between October 2017 and February 2018 were down several percent compared to the same period the previous year, price comparison website check24 says in a press release. The main reason for lower costs was a “ relatively mild winter,” ...
Fossil-fuel utility RWE has called for compensation if Germany opts for a quick coal exit. “If there is a desire, socially, that a coal exit should come very quickly we have to be compensated for it,” company CEO Rolf Martin Schmitz told an industry ...
With the reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), “Germany’s once vaunted renewable energy strategy looks to be running out of steam,” writes Nnamdi Anyadike for the global energy industry website power-technology.com. "Despite its success in ...
Energiewende country Germany will use its G20 presidency this year to push for a global price on carbon as one of many measures to achieve climate goal, reports Roger Harrabin for BBC News. “We need to find a mechanism for a carbon price. Then it’ll be ...
There is a huge, untapped potential to use biomass from food waste and the sugar industry in India, a study published by the German Biogas Association (Fachverband Biogas) and its Indian counterpart IBA suggests. The report gives an overview of the ...
In 2020, stricter environmental regulations concerning pollution from seagoing vessels will come into force, putting added pressure on the German shipbuilding industry to innovate, according to an article in tageszeitung (taz). The industry is currently ...
The environment ministry of the federal state of Hesse has issued a licence to energy company RWE to dismantle the decommissioned nuclear plant Biblis near Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports online. “Nuclear energy is now a thing of ...
The exceptionally sunny weather in Germany is lavishing owners of solar panels with a lot of money, according to an article published on Welt Online. However, the rate of remuneration varies widely: those who installed solar panels in the early 2000s ...
A strong global carbon price of 40-80 US dollars per tonne of CO₂ by 2020 and 50-100 US dollars by 2030 could be key to reaching climate goals and keeping the global temperature rise below two degrees, according to a new report by the High-Level ...
The fact that climate protection has been one of the most discussed topics at the G20 summit in Hamburg is “one of the paradoxical achievements of Donald Trump”, Michael Bauchmüller writes in an opinion piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Alas, the climate ...
The rollout of additional electric vehicle charging stations is a chicken-and-egg problem, according to a new report published by the German Economic Institute (IW). Before purchasing an e-car, potential buyers want to be assured that there are enough ...
A wave of mergers and acquisitions in the energy market does not bode well for the future of German utility E.ON as an independent company, Jürgen Flauger writes in Handelsblatt. “E.ON has been low priced for some time now,” Flauger writes, explaining ...
The final communiqué of the G20 group of leading industrialised and emerging countries clearly reflects the dissent between the United States and the other 19 members on climate protection, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a press conference after ...
The Chinese state enterprise SGCC has already signed a contract to buy a 20-percent share of grid operator 50Hertz, but the German government is trying to reverse the deal – which it says concerns “critical infrastructure” – before it takes effect, Thomas ...
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) launched Germany’s first onshore wind tender, introduced by last year’s reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the agency says in a press release. Tenders affect facilities with an installed capacity larger than 750 ...
The planned law on energy efficiency in public buildings will be further delayed due to disagreements within the government coalition of conservatives (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), writes Klaus Stratmann in Handelsblatt. “Buildings are key for ...
International efforts in the framework of the G20 to limit the effects of climate change will have to rely on wind power as a pillar of low-carbon energy generation, the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) says in a press release. “Auctions for wind and ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists that she expects talks to discuss the possibilities for a new government coalition to last several weeks before actual negotiations begin, news agency Reuters reports. The lengthy talks were down to the ...
10 Dec 2018, 14:06 Benjamin Wehrmann Clean Energy Wire 91tv Climate & CO2 Business & Jobs Tageszeitung There’s a “silent consensus” surrounding the international climate action negotiations that “capitalism has to stop the climate catastrophe,” ...
The exceptionally sunny weather in Germany has brought solar plant owners an unusually high yield of power from the sun, energy company E.ON says in a press release. Between May and July, the German Meteorological Service (DWD) registered 817 hours of ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the expansion of the country’s power grid an “absolute priority” for the next legislative period. At a convention of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Merkel said Germany was “lagging behind on all ...
German energy company innogy will take part in the country’s first call for tenders for offshore wind power plants with a 280 megawatt capacity project near the island of Heligoland in the North Sea, reports Jürgen Flauger for Handelsblatt. Innogy’s ...
German officials said they regretted state-controlled French energy supplier EDF’s decision to postpone its decision over the decommissioning of the 40-year-old Fessenheim nuclear plant until at least next year, Spiegel Online reports. Rita Schwarzelühr ...
Bringing down emission levels in the transport sector is set to become the German “society’s next major conflict,” Thorsten Knuf writes in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Rundschau. A recent study conducted by the think tank Agora Verkehrswende* ...
Ministerial discussions between Ukraine, Russia, and the EU regarding the future delivery of Russian gas to Western Europe began yesterday in Berlin, Tagesspiegel reports. Economy minister Peter Altmaier is “optimistic” that a resolution to the dispute ...
G20 member states are beginning to decarbonise their economies, but the required investment in fossil fuels remains so high that the “well below 2°Celsius” global warming reduction target will be “missed by a wide margin”, according to the Brown to Green ...
Environmental protection and conservativism are two defining traits of German society but a corresponding political coalition of the Green Party and the CDU seems as distant as always days before this week’s parliamentary election, Fabian Federl writes on ...
Several German start-ups prepare to revolutionise the national energy market, writes Helmut Bünder in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We’ll get rid of established suppliers” for instance is the slogan of Sonnen GmbH, a high-tech company from the German ...
More than 60 civil society groups under the umbrella organisation Climate Alliance are calling for an ambitious phase-out of coal-fired power generation, a higher goal for renewables expansion, and a CO₂ floor price in the power sector. The alliance has ...
G20 member states are beginning to decarbonise their economies, but the required investment in fossil fuels remains so high that the “well below 2°Celsius” global warming reduction target will be “missed by a wide margin”, according to the Brown to Green ...
The German energy transition needs to be “internationalised” if it is to be successful, as Germany’s Energiewende will continue to have an impact on energy markets of its electrical neighbours and beyond, writes Nick Butler of the Financial Times. The ...
The goals in Germany’s climate action plan, agreed by the government in November 2016, mean that half of the country’s coal-fired power capacity must retire by 2030, state secretary in the economy and energy ministry Rainer Baake told a business ...
Germany will only be able to reach its 2030 climate targets with the help of ambitious EU car emission rules, writes Christian Hochfeld, head of mobility think tank Agora Verkehrswende*, in a guest article for Zeit Online. The current EU Commission ...
Heating systems in Germany will have to change substantially by 2030 if the country is to reach its climate targets for 2050, according to a study commissioned by energy think-tank Agora Energiewende*. While the share of natural gas used for heating will ...
German economy minister Brigitte Zypries opposes a quick end to lignite-fired power production in the country, Christian Grimm writes in an article for Dow Jones Newswires carried by website finanztreff.de. “We cannot afford to shut down the large lignite ...
Social Democrat state premier of Brandenburg Dietmar Woidke warns that certain coal related provisions in a late draft of the environment ministry’s climate plan could endanger power supply security in Germany, reports Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt. In a ...
Efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of new cars sold in the European Union (EU) stalled in 2017 compared to 2016, according to provisional data published today by the European Environment Agency (EEA). At 118.5 grammes (g) of carbon dioxide (CO2) per ...
Germany’s consumption of natural gas continued to rise in the first half of 2017, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) says in a press release. Since January, Germans burned the equivalent of 516 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of ...
Germany’s offshore wind energy industry expects a further drop in costs for new projects contracted by bidding processes, representatives of the industry said at a press conference of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE). “More practical experience ...
20 May 2019, 13:12 Expert DLR- German Aerospace Center Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Transport Technology Benjamin Wehrmann Climate & CO2 Transport Policy Hamburger Abendblatt / Clean Energy Wire The idea by socialist EU Commission ...
Diesel engines will have “ a renaissance in the foreseeable future ” and shed its currently-tarnished image as a particularly polluting technology, VW head Michael Müller said at the important trade fair Geneva International Motor Show, the Frankfurter ...
Germany is increasingly lagging behind other countries on sustainability, the head of group sustainability at stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse, Kristina Jeromin, told financial daily Börsen-Zeitung in an interview. Germany has long since lost its ...
Germany’s coal exit is “already happening, step-by-step”, but the country still needs coal power plants, Helmar Rendez, head of Lusatian energy company Leag, told Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview. “Anyone calling for the immediate shutdown of ...
The German Trade Union Association DGB is set to reposition itself on climate policy at its upcoming annual congress, reports Malte Kreutzfeldt in daily taz. In a draft paper on energy, the unions only say they support the Paris climate goals, thereby ...
Seventy-nine projects with a total capacity of around 77 megawatt have been successful in Germany’s second round of tenders for biomass plant, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) said in a press release. This represents a significant increase of awarded ...
The federal government wants to soften the blow of phasing out coal by investing in large battery factories, or Gigafactories, according to an article in Die Welt. In coal-mining areas around the country, these manufacturing facilities could provide a new ...
An almost 12 percent increase in fuel oil prices in December 2016 compared to the previous month accelerated inflation in Germany, according to the European Climate Foundation (ECF). “If energy prices would have remained unchanged compared to the previous ...
Germany needs regional power markets and a legislation overhaul to cope with its increasingly decentralised electricity system, and replace the current “chaos” in grid fees, levies and taxes, according to think tank Agora Energiewende.* “We need to all ...
German utility STEAG has announced the decommissioning of five coal-fired generating units due to a low wholesale electricity price, Handelsblatt Online reports. The shutdown will affect hundreds of jobs on the sites in the regions of North-Rhine ...
Germany will need the well-directed use of power-based synthetic fuels in connection with a phase-out of oil and natural gas to reach its long-term climate targets, the think tanks Agora Energiewende and Agora Verkehrswende* write in a joint analysis. ...
The generation of one kilowatt-hour of electricity has produced an average of 489 g of CO 2 in 2017, which is 36 percent less than in 1990, the Federal Environment Agency has calculated in a new publication on CO 2 emissions trends in the power sector ...
The city of Berlin has set out concrete steps to achieve its goal of drastically reducing its CO2 emissions by 2050, the city council said in a press release. Its new Energy and Climate Protection Programme 2030 (BEK 2030) contains around 100 efficiency ...
German energy company innogy will continue with plans to enter the U.S. onshore wind market, despite worries over future support of renewables in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, reports Reuters. "We are not in waiting mode in the United States ...
Innogy, the green subsidiary of German energy provider RWE, could be the biggest stock market launch of any German company since the year 2000 – but renewable energy likely only plays a minor role for its expected success, write Varinia Bernau and ...
26 Oct 2016, 00:00 The rifts over the German Climate Action Plan 2050 and an exit from coal-fired power generation were highlighted at a string of events on Wednesday. Federal and regional environment ministry officials stressed the need for a framework ...
Battery-powered transport is only a transitional technology and hydrogen-powered fuel cells are the “real solution” for the future of mobility, writes Aldo Belloni, CEO of German chemical company and hydrogen supplier Linde Group in a guest commentary in ...
German climate policy announcements are the most ambitious among all of the western industrialised nations in the G7 but the country only comes second to last in the group when it comes to ending support for fossil fuel use, the think tank Overseas ...
14 May 2019, 13:24 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars Technology Clean Energy Wire The world’s oldest carmaker Daimler has said it aims to bring the share of e-cars in its sales to 50 percent by 2030 and to achieve a “carbon-neutral passenger car fleet” by 2039. Plug ...
Managers in the utilities sector seem wary of a centre-right coalition of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the business-oriented Free Democrats (FDP) after September’s federal election, although the pairing has traditionally been seen ...
The ruling by a German court to stop the clearing of the embattled Hambach Forest has prompted energy company RWE to consider reducing coal extraction at its nearby lignite mine by up to one third, Claus Hecking and Stefan Schultz write on Spiegel Online. ...
Representatives of hundreds of cities from around the world meet in Bonn in the framework of the UN Climate Change Conference in the former German capital to discuss mitigation measures against global warming and other policies necessary to reduce ...
The costs for power grid stabilising measures rose to a record 1.4 billion euros in 2017 (880 million euros in 2016), says the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) in its report on grid and system security measures. This was due to lagging grid expansion, a ...
A new study published by the World Energy Council Germany (WEC) on the climate impact of the country’s transport sector says that policymakers fail to base their decisions on a “coherent big picture.” “The current regulatory framework is tied to the ...
Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) have issued a paper outlining the party’s economic policy ideas meant to substantiate their candidate Martin Schulz’s position in his bid to become German chancellor, Henrike Roßbach writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
An ambitious target to replace all combustion engine cars in Germany with electric vehicles by 2030 might increase CO 2 emissions instead of lowering them, writes Denes Csala, lecturer at Lancaster University, in an article for The Conversation. “Unless ...
Six years after Germany resumed plans for a quick nuclear exit, there is a still question over whether funds put aside by nuclear plant operators for a final nuclear waste repository will be sufficient, Bernd Freytag writes in an opinion piece for ...
The inflation rate in Germany in January 2017, as measured by the consumer price index, is expected to be 1.9 percent on January 2016, according to Germany’s statistics agency Destatis. This was largely due to higher energy prices, according to an article ...
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a global organisation of 35 developed and emerging countries, has urged Germany to adopt further measures to reach its climate targets. “Additional policies are needed to meet even the ...
German utility RWE has overhauled its decision-making process, after the group underestimated the transition to green energy and lost much of the 10 billion euros it invested in conventional power generation in the second half of the last decade, the ...
Nowhere in Germany are the effects of the energy transition more visible than in the Northwest, the centre of the country’s wind power industry, writes Volker Kühn in Nordwest-Zeitung. “With wind power’s stormy expansion on and offshore, the region has ...
Stefan Kapferer, head of Germany’s largest energy industry association BDEW (Association of Energy and Water Industries), says the country’s next government would be prudent to repeal the electricity tax. The tax "can no longer be justified" and ...
Most German biogas plants capable of producing power according to demand are not making use of this flexibility because the spread between base and peak prices at the wholesale market is not large enough, the German government said. The response came in a ...
28 Sep 2017, 00:00 A ‘Jamaica’ coalition between the CDU/CSU, the FDP and the Greens is currently the only realistic scenario for a stable government in Germany, and all parties must compromise to prevent “dreadful” new elections, says long-time Merkel ...
Wholesale power prices in Germany were comparatively low in 2017, grid operator TenneT says in a press release. Especially during the winter months, average prices in Germany and the Netherlands were much lower than in France and Belgium, TenneT reports, ...
E.ON spin-off Uniper made a net loss of 3.2 billion euros last year due to big writedowns on generation and gas-storage assets, reports Guy Chazan for the Financial Times. But Uniper said it had “good momentum for 2017” having delivered a “solid” ...
Swedish energy group Vattenfall has acquired a wind development project consisting of up to 79 turbines in the German North Sea. Currently under development, the Global Tech II wind project is located some 85 kilometres north of the island of Borkum and ...
Private households in Germany paid more than 10 billion euros in taxes and levies on power consumption to the state in 2017, the German Taxpayer Institute (DSi) of the German Taxpayers Federation (BdSt) says in an analysis seen by the Clean Energy Wire. ...
Elements of the Climate Action Programme 2020, which the German government approved in 2014 to close the gap between projected greenhouse gas emissions and the reduction target of 40 percent by 2020, have still not been put into action, Silke Kersting ...
A new company founded by Munich’s public utilities plans to buy small and old wind farms no longer eligible for support under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the company, Hanse Windkraft, says in a press release. The company plans to repower wind farms ...
Welt Online / dpa East German state premier criticises power price differences Once again, an eastern German state premier has criticised regional discrepancies in the power price, dpa news agency reports in an article carried by Welt Online. Brandenburg ...
A “failed government policy that puts the brakes on the Energiewende” is the real reason that CO₂ emissions in the energy sector continue to rise, writes Kurt Stenger in an opinion piece in Neues Deutschland. The federal government should renew its ...
The German invention of an underwater concrete ball to store electricity will not solve the country’s storage challenges, writes Susanne Preuß in an opinion piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “But it is an additional piece of the mosaic formed ...
The share of renewable fuels in Germany’s heating system took over that of hard coal in 2016, an answer by the government to a parliamentary inquiry by the Green Party published by the German Federal Parliament shows. Their share has more than doubled ...
The Swedish government has given the green light for construction of the controversial natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 that connects Germany with Russia via the Baltic Sea, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Focus Online. While Sweden has ...
02 Apr 2019, 13:56 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars International Clean Energy Wire The new Model 3 by US e-car pioneer Tesla has overtaken German car industry heavyweights Daimler and BMW in European e-car sales in the first month after the model’s launch on the ...
Europe’s largest coach service, Flixbus, will use fully electric buses on the 150-kilometre route between Paris and Amiens, the company said in a press release. Flixbus says this will be the world’s first trial of e-buses on a long-haul route. “At the ...
German power customers will pay more than 35 billion euros in taxes, fees, and surcharges with their electricity bills in 2017, the utilities lobby German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) writes in a press release. “This is more than ...
In the face of one of the hottest and driest summers ever recorded in Germany, the Green Party is calling for an aid fund worth at least two billion euros to provide financial resources for climate change mitigation across the country, the party says in a ...
The extreme summer of 2018 in Germany and most of Europe has prompted climate change deniers to hastily announce that the exceptional heat and drought are merely normal weather phenomena and do not testify to the human effect on the global climate, ...
In response to accusations that Siemens’ job cuts in its fossil power business are “antisocial” and caused by bad management, company CEO Joe Kaeser says the Energiewende is right in principle but is poorly managed. In an open letter addressed to SPD head ...
03 Jun 2016
03 Jun 2016, 00:00 Kerstine Appunn Julian Wettengel Clean Energy Wire 91tv Recharge “Thousands protest in Berlin to save Energiewende” Several thousand protesters mobilised by the renewables sector demonstrated against current government plans to reform ...
Russian and German energy companies Gazprom and Uniper confirmed their intention to bring the contentious offshore gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 into operation on schedule, Gazprom said in a press release. In a separate article, Financial Times (FT) reported ...
German buyers can by now choose between 27 purely electric cars, with the government offering a 4,000-euro premium and tax reliefs. Yet most private individuals still don’t opt for e-cars, RP Online reports. Between January and May this year, 1.43 million ...
Exemptions from taxes and levies on energy use for large German companies amounted to 17 billion euros in 2016, according to estimates in an analysis by NGO Green Budget Germany (FÖS). “About 11.5 billion euros were financed directly by other power ...
Germany’s government sits on a big budget surplus, money it should spend on the energy transition and climate protection but it does not, writes Petra Pinzler in a commentary on Zeit Online. The government could use the money to push climate-friendly ...
17 Jan 2019, 14:11 Sören Amelang Fossil fuels Elections & Politics Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / Tagesspiegel Germany’s coal exit will have economic impacts well beyond the coal industry and regions, Andreas Mihm writes in a commentary in the ...
With the most photovoltaic capacity in Europe, Germany has started to store excess solar energy to enhance local usage. In doing so, the country is piloting a renewable energy strategy that will benefit the rest of the world, Jeffrey Michel writes in ...
The decarbonisation of supposed green pioneers like California and Germany is too slow to meet Paris climate targets, Eduardo Porter writes in the New York Times. Despite a substantial increase in German renewable capacity, generation barely rose last ...
In an interview with Silke Kersting and Klaus Stratmann of financial daily Handelsblatt, German environment minister Svenja Schulze warns that the country is facing an uphill battle to achieve its climate protection goals. “We have already lost too much ...
A massive expansion of France’s renewable power capacity could lead to a wave of cheap nuclear power flooding the energy markets of Germany and other European countries, Markus Becker writes on Spiegel Online. The French “transition énergétique” could ...
Falling emissions from the energy sector mean Germany’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fell slightly in 2015, compared to 2014, according to revised data published by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). 901.9 million tonnes CO₂ equivalents were ...
Amid rising prices for carbon emissions and coal, Germany’s wholesale power price for one-year futures has reached its highest level in six years, Nora Kamprath Buli writes for Montel News. At 50.10 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), prices reached their ...
The influential Federation of German Industries (BDI) has called on the government to come up with a strategy to secure the supply of scarce raw materials for “future technologies” needed for e-mobility, digitalisation, and the energy transition. “The ...
Germany has granted about 100,000 million euros in subsidies to e-car buyers over the past two years, merely one sixth of the total sum authorities have earmarked for helping e-mobility get off the ground in the country, the Federal Office for Economic ...
Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall posted a pretax profit in 2017 despite sluggish electricity demand, helped in part by new wind power capacity, writes news agency Reuters. Vattenfall started operation of two new wind parks in 2017, one of them the ...
10 Nov 2017, 00:00 Tough talks- but not yet reason to worry / EU remains steadfast on pre-2020 action and inflexible on Adaptation Fund / "No jobs on a dead planet"- trade unions / Climate-smart agriculture / Effects of climate change in Germany ...
Several industry representatives support the call to abolish the electricity tax in Germany, writes Jens Tartler in Tagesspiegel. Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) and German Engineering Federation (VDMA) argue that power ...
The new German transport minister, Andreas Scheuer, has said he doesn’t like the concept “transport transition,” news agency Reuters reports. The German word “Verkehrswende," literally meaning ‘transport turnaround,’ describes a set of ...
Industry and energy production emissions reduction in Germany has been below the EU-average for the tenth year in a row, according to figures released by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). With 453 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalent, combined emissions ...
Germany’s first diesel driving ban on two thoroughfares in Hamburg is no more than “ gesture politics,” because numerous exceptions are granted to residents, suppliers, and many others, writes Martin Gropp in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
German renewable power company sonnen has said it will offer e-car charging infrastructure free of charge with flat rate electricity contracts to customers switching to the provider, reports Henning Peitsmeier in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We ...
The German economy and energy minister, Peter Altmaier, has called on Russia’s government to guarantee the continued transmission of natural gas via Ukraine’s territory after the completion of the planned Nord Stream 2 offshore pipeline through the Baltic ...
While Germany’s energy transition has achieved some impressive results with renewables accounting for around a third of electricity, the lavish subsidies available in the renewable energy sector have also given rise to get-rich-quick schemes that can end ...
The Paris Climate Agreement clearly implies speeding up the Energiewende, but the Renewable Energy Act reform will have the opposite effect, writes Werner Eckert in a commentary for public broadcaster SWR. Instead of trying to solve the problems ...
Small- and medium-sized suppliers of Germany’s mighty carmakers should receive more financial support to accomplish the shift to e-mobility and lower vehicle emissions as proposed by the EU, the economy ministers of Germany’s federal states were quoted by ...
For a long time, Germany had been confident it was on the right track when it comes to climate action, but scepticism and resistance towards low-emission technologies are on the rise in the country today, Niklas Zaboji writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
A whole range of different policies is needed to bring down the emissions arising from basic commodity production in Germany, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) says in its weekly report. The production and use of basic commodities like ...
Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has ignited a storm with the recent publication of its Green Paper on increasing energy efficiency, Philipp Vetter writes in Die Welt. The paper proposed a flexible energy tax to counteract ...
Germany could import liquefied natural gas (LNG) via its neighbouring countries, but this depends on the wholesale market prices of both LNG and pipeline gas, said Stefan Kapferer, head of utilities association BDEW, writes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ...
Germany is due to close its last hard coal mine next year, and the affected regions prepare for the transition, for example by considering renewable energy projects or tourism, Valerie Hamilton reports in a feature for Public Radio International (PRI). ...
The stakeholders in Germany’s ongoing coal exit debate “still form coalitions with traditional allies and cling to established lines of reasoning,” according to a paper written by Anna Leipprand and Christian Flachsland, and published in Energy Research ...
After the announced split-up of German utility innogy between its parent company RWE and competitor E.ON, investors question whether the previous split of innogy from RWE was necessary, news agency Reuters reports. Old mantras about the future of the ...
16 Mar 2016
16 Mar 2016, 00:00 Kerstine Appunn Clean Energy Wire 91tv Frankfurter Rundschau “Verdi lets go of pro-coal attitude” Trade union Verdi is open to more climate action and a coal exit before 2050, board member Andreas Scheidt told the Frankfurter Rundschau. ...
The parliamentary group of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party has welcomed the first session of the commission tasked with planning the country’s coal exit, but stressed that “thoroughness must come before speed” in the group’s ...
The 2030 emissions reduction target defines the duty and objectives of the commission tasked with planning Germany’s coal exit, climate economist Barbara Praetorius said in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel. “The 2030 climate targets are set, they ...
Economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier has proposed quickly retiring five gigawatts of lignite power generation capacity with a view to the country’s ongoing talks about a coal phase-out, sources told the Rheinische Post. In addition, he suggested ...
The German power grid will need more backup power plants to safeguard the system against blackouts during the next winter, the Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA) said in a press release. “We still need backup capacities to stabilise the grid in critical ...
The leadership of the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Green Party and the Free Democrats (FDP) in Schleswig-Holstein have agreed on forming a government, said CDU frontrunner Daniel Günther in a press conference. The agreement “shows how ecology can be ...
New problems at its Datteln 4 hard-coal power plant have caused a hefty impairment charge at German fossil power generator Uniper. First quarter adjusted EBIT was 350 million euros, down from 514 million euros in the same period a year earlier, the ...
Wind turbine manufacturer Senvion has secured a large construction project in India with a capacity of 300 megawatt (MW), the company says in a press release. The German company will deliver over 130 turbines with a capacity of 2.3 MW that can power ...
Progress in modernising Germany’s buildings to save energy is slow partly because of a confusing array of available support, according to a study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW). “At present, the country boasts 3,350 support schemes to ...
Protestors temporarily interrupted German energy company RWE’s demolition of a protected church in the town of Immerath in western German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Manfred Kriener writes on klimaretter.info. Greenpeace activists occupied the ...
Germany’s membership in the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) is a paradox since the country’s decision to phase out nuclear power in 2000, writes Joachim Wille in Frankfurter Rundschau. Provisions of the membership contract still called on ...
Introducing a CO 2 price would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also the returns on investments into fossil fuel energy sources, leading to increased investment in technology, research and development in other sectors, the Mercator Research ...
The German Solar Industry Association BSW and the German Wind Energy Association BWE say joint auctions for solar and wind power capacity won’t achieve a well-balanced mix of renewables, Sandra Enkhardt reports for pv magazine. While prices are currently ...
Germany would have enough power for 1 million electric cars and the power grid would be able to cope with the charging pattern of these vehicles, Michael Brecht, author at eMobilitaetsblog.de writes in an opinion piece for Welt online. Brecht rejects the ...
The planned deal between German utility heavyweights RWE and E.ON to split up RWE’s spin-off innogy between them has attracted the attention of Germany’s cartel office, the Bundeskartellamt, Handelsblatt reports based on information provided by news ...
Cultivating feed in industrial facilities rather than on croplands, using a method originally developed during the Cold War for space travel, could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other negative implications for the environment, according to a ...
For a successful energy transition, Germany needs a well-ordered coal exit and accelerated wind power expansion, Vattenfall’s Senior Executive Vice President Tuomo Hatakka told the Funke Mediengruppe. The next federal government must organise the phase ...
08 Feb 2017
There was “strong competition” in the first solar tender following this year’s changes in Germany’s Renewable Energy Law, according to the Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA). Winning bids for arrays with a capacity of more than 750 kilowatts averaged 6.58 cents ...
The effect of think tank Agora Energiewende’s* proposal for an ecologic tax reform on Germany’s major political parties will be limited, Hannes Koch writes in a commentary for tageszeitung (taz). Agora Energiewende suggests lowering fees on electricity ...
The country’s lignite phase out needs another 20 years to avoid a “harsh structural break” for Germany’s coal regions – like it happened at the time of German reunification, Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer told Leipziger Volkszeitung in an ...
Apart from questions about political regulation and technological challenges, Germany’s energy transition is a phenomenon that changes the social conditions in many regions across the country, write Tom Morton and Katja Müller in scientific journal Energy ...
German energy company Uniper is the first utility to put forward ideas for an eventual phase-out of coal-fired power generation following the launch of the coal-exit commission last month, Klaus Stratmann reports in Handelsblatt. Uniper CEO Klaus Schäfer ...
Foreign minister Heiko Maas said that Germany would be dedicated to dealing with climate change-related conflict risks should the country be elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2019/2020, reports the AFP news ...
The German Green Party has requested special wind power auctions to ensure enough new renewable power capacity. In a draft law to amend the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the Greens propose auctioning off an additional 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind ...
11 Dec 2018, 13:37 Sören Amelang Clean Energy Wire 91tv Cars Reuters / Transport & Environment Due to German and Austrian resistance to more ambitious car emission limits, the European Union has failed to reach a compromise over how sharply to curb ...
The Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) is set to test the storage of large amounts of power in Germany’s largest battery, the Fraunhofer ICT says on its website. A wind turbine with a capacity of 2 megawatt will feed electricity into the ...
Fossil utility Uniper has promised to raise its dividend by 25 percent every year until 2020 in its battle to remain independent, reports Tobias Buck in the Financial Times. The E.ON spin-off needs to win over shareholders to fend off a hostile takeover ...
With more and more renewables needed, the conflict between climate and nature protection grows - and simply “saving energy” will not be sufficient, writes Ralf Nestler in an opinion piece for Tagesspiegel. “Already, the limit of what can be asked of the ...
The need for, and costs of, power grid stabilising measures decreased significantly in 2016, mainly due to lower production of wind and solar power and improved grid management, says the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) in its report on grid and system ...
In the debate about the controversial planned direct Russian-German pipeline Nord Stream 2 and its effects on Ukraine, the German federal government wants to help ensure that the requisite modernisation of Ukraine’s gas infrastructure takes place. Germany ...
The European Commission has given Germany’s plans to expand its charging infrastructure for alternative engines the green light, the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI) says in a press release. “We will give car users the confidence that they can ...
With the reform of the Renewable Energy Act “reason has returned to ecology” in Germany, writes Jasper von Altenbockum in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The reform was about “wringing out a quantum of market economy” from the ...
Several European civil society organisations, including Friends of the Earth (BUND) and Climate-Alliance Germany, have launched a collective campaign “to catalyse and hasten the move away from coal and towards clean renewable energy”. Several maps and ...
Natural gas will become the most-used fossil fuel in Germany’s electricity supply within two decades, RWE boss Rolf Schmitz said at an energy industry conference held by business newspaper Handelsblatt in Berlin. Natural gas plants will be the only ...
The planet holds enough natural resources needed for the global energy transition, write research institutes acatech, Leopoldina and Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities in a report. But the uneven distribution creates the need for ...
Armin Laschet, premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s largest federal state, is not willing to act as a mediator in the negotiations between environmental activists and the energy company RWE over the clearing of a forest near the Hambach ...
Examining the decision by coalition negotiators to postpone Germany’s climate goals, Akshat Rathi, writing in Quartz, looks at both sides of the issue. On the one hand, the decision makes sense in view of Germany’s major investment in renewable energy ...
The EU energy package is not ambitious enough to help Europe reach the targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, writes Joachim Wille in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Rundschau. The label says “Clean Energy for all Europeans”, but “whoever opens the ...
German utility innogy aims to bolster its position in photovoltaics and energy storage with the acquisition of the German solar and battery specialist BELECTRIC Solar & Battery GmbH. The transaction, announced in August 2016, has been completed, ...
Germany will likely miss several renewables and emissions targets despite the reform of certain key regulations concerning the German electricity sector carried out by the federal government and parliament in 2016, according to a background paper by think ...
The Association of Energy Market Innovators (BNE) and the renewable power provider LichtBlick welcome plans by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to lower grid fees by decreasing the return on equity operators invest in Germany’s grid infrastructure, ...
Grid fees will be aligned across Germany despite economy minister Sigmar Gabriel’s recent backtracking on such plans, Reuters reports citing government sources. Responding to pressure from eastern German federal states the government is working on a bill ...
Germany’s environment minister, Svenja Schulze, has weighed in on the dispute between environmental groups and energy company RWE over the expansion of a lignite mine and the clearing of a nearby forest, tagesschau.de reports. “If we want to achieve a ...
A new online platform by German utility association BDEW and business consultancy PwC aims to share experiences with alternative mobility and integrated city concepts, BDEW said in a press release. The website eco-mobility.org introduces the latest ...
The new government coalition in Germany’s northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, has agreed on new regulations for wind energy expansion. This includes an increase of the minimum distance between turbines and the nearest settlement from 800 to 1,000 ...
The German natural gas sector is demanding changes to the government’s forthcoming Climate Action Plan 2050, saying the current draft fails to recognise the potential of natural gas on the way to decarbonise Germany’s economy. A ‘natural gas exit’ would ...
Siemens mulls axing thousands of jobs in its power turbine business because the global growth of renewable energies dampens demand for coal and gas plants, according to a source familiar with the matter, Irene Preisinger reports for Reuters. The company’s ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that federal and state governments were “trying to find a solution” in the dispute about nationwide grid fee alignment. “At the moment, a difficult battle is raging on how we best succeed in managing this surcharge ...
Rapid wind power development in Germany is not a sign of the Energiewende’s success- and the biggest changes in the country’s energy system are yet to come, writes Klaus Stratmann in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt. The transition was not just about ...
Storing heat underground offers the possibility to replace fossil-powered heating plants, according to a press release by Kiel University on this week’s national symposium on the technology. The potential for underground storage should be used to solve ...
17 Nov 2016, 00:00 Germans will elect a new federal government in autumn 2017. Security, economic stability and refugees are likely to dominate election campaigns, but keeping the Energiewende on a steady course and fulfilling Germany’s international ...
The German government exports the Energiewende and supports the development of renewable energies outside the country’s borders, like on the Greek island of Tilos, writes Handelsblatt. Economy minister Sigmar Gabriel is on a two day visit to Greece to ...
Land use, land-use change and forestry in Germany absorbed fewer emissions in 2015 than in 2010. Net emissions were roughly minus 14.6 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalents in 2015, compared to minus 16.4 million tonnes in 2010, according to Federal ...
It is high time for a finance transition- in addition to the energy, transport and agricultural transformations- to protect the climate, write Green Members of the German Bundestag Annalena Baerbock and Gerhard Schick in a guest commentary in Frankfurter ...
German regions need to intensify their cooperation when it comes to implementing the Energiewende, Roland Jäkel, head of the trade association Lower Silesia in Saxony, said in an interview with Sächsische Zeitung. “Politicians won’t create new jobs in ...
Power prices for German households increase on average by 4.4 percent this spring, price comparison website Verivox told Clean Energy Wire. According to Verivox, 70 regional power suppliers will increase their prices, resulting in additional costs of ...
In spite of a record wind power expansion in the western German region of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the country’s largest federal state still trails in terms of renewables expansion, Welt Online reports. In 2017, the state added 312 wind turbines, ...
The go-kart track where former German Formula 1 race driver and motorsports icon Michael Schumacher learned his trade is to fall prey to the expansion of the lignite mine Hambach of energy company RWE, public broadcaster WDR reports on his website. The ...
German utility E.ON ’s fossil-fuel subsidiary Uniper plans layoffs and wage cuts due to challenges caused by the country’s transition to low-carbon energy generation, Rheinische Post reports. During collective negotiations with trade unions Verdi and IG ...
Germany’s environment minister Barbara Hendricks says the country is lagging behind in developing electric mobility. “It’s no secret that Germany is no frontrunner when it comes to electric vehicles,” Hendricks said in a speech at the international ...
Total EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) stationary emissions rose by 0.3 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year – the first rise in seven years, according to an analysis by British climate NGO Sandbag, based on provisional EU data. Lignite ...
The German government and the EU Commission have reached an agreement on state-aid related aspects of the country’s power market, clearing the way for the “most important reform” since the market liberalisation, German energy minister Sigmar Gabriel told ...
Germany’s forests could take in three times the amount of CO₂ from the atmosphere by the end of the century if they are better protected and used more ecologically than is the case today, says Greenpeace Germany, based on a study conducted by the ...
Germany might need new gas power plants to balance out the fluctuating feed-in by renewables, Uniper CEO Klaus Schäfer tells Rheinische Post in an interview. “The question of supply security is going to resurface, at the latest when the last nuclear ...
Germany and France have agreed to develop a 2050 European Union strategy for long-term decarbonisation, both governments said in a declaration following a joint ministerial meeting near Berlin. This is not only a necessity, but also an economic ...
The state parliament in the northern German wind-power state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MWP) has proposed a real estate tax for renewable energy installations that should be introduced across the entire country, Frank Pubantz writes in the Ostsee ...
Germany’s most populous federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), plans to expand its solar power capacity, Die Welt online reports. NRW’s economics minister Andreas Pinkwart said the state would cut red tape for new rooftop solar panels, including on ...
The German Federal Court of Auditors’ criticism of how the economy ministry has managed the costs of the Energiewende is an embarrassment for minister Sigmar Gabriel, Thorsten Knuf writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Rundschau. “No idea of the actual ...
The average German household with an annual consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) has paid a total of about 2,200 euros renewables surcharge since the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) was introduced in April 2000 with the aim of supporting wind, solar and ...
A socially just transition of all economic sectors should be the guiding principal for modern climate policy, German environment minister Svenja Schulze told more than 30 ministers at the opening of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. According to ...
Germany must “significantly increase” its goals for renewables expansion to supply all sectors with electricity in the future and reach its own climate targets, writes the Social Democratic parliamentary group in the Bundestag (SPD) in a new position ...
German coal mining company Mibrag posted a 43.7 million euro loss in 2016, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reports. Mibrag, one of Germany’s four remaining lignite-mining companies, was suffering from Germany’s transition from fossil energy sources to renewables ...
German carmakers Daimler, VW and BMW try to appear environmentally conscious, but in the US they seem determined to sow doubts over climate science, Jan Keuchel writes for Handelsblatt. The companies have all announced ambitious plans to engage in climate ...
18 Feb 2019, 13:28 Expert VW- Volkswagen Transport Cars Rachel Waldholz Clean Energy Wire 91tv Climate & CO2 Cars Business & Jobs Der Spiegel / Electrek / Bloomberg Volkswagen plans to introduce an internal CO2 levy in a drive to reduce the ...
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) will lower the equity interest rates for operators of power grids and gas networks from 9.05 to 6.91 percent for new, and from 7.14 to 5.12 percent for old facilities. The lower rates- to be applied in 2018 for gas and ...
Germany’s power industry will be able to supply the additional electricity needed for switching from combustion engine technology to e-mobility, according to a study conducted by Aurora Energy Research and reported by news agency Reuters. An anticipated ...
Even before the highly anticipated official launch of Germany’s coal exit task force, the government has given up on the commission’s timetable, Silke Kersting and Klaus Stratmann report for business daily Handelsblatt. During ongoing meetings on the ...
A resident from the German coal mining state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) demands 80 billion euros for a piece of land that energy company RWE needs for lignite mining, arguing that the sum equals the revenues the company intends to make with the local ...
The German state of Brandenburg is planning to invest 50 million euros in developing electricity and heat storage technology, but the European Commission must first decide if the programme abides by EU competition rules, writes Potsdamer Neueste ...
The federal economy ministry proposes to lower the threshold for energy-intensive industries to be eligible for a reduced renewables surcharge, writes Spiegel Online. With this proposed adjustment to the reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), reported ...
The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag has introduced a draft law that would make international climate goals and obligations, as well as the nuclear exit, binding under German Basic Law. In a plenary debate, Green group leader Anton Hofreiter ...
Germany’s offshore wind power production in the North Sea in 2017 was 47 percent higher than in 2016, writes grid operator TenneT in a press release. With a record of 15.97 terawatt hours (TWh), North Sea wind made up a total of 15.9 percent of all German ...
Several German environmental organisations say they want to have a range of assurances from the German government before they participate in the so-called coal commission meant to prepare the end of coal-fired power production in the country, the news ...
Left and Green Party politicians in the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg want clarity about the follow-up costs of lignite mining in the eastern German region of Lusatia, reports the news agency dpa in an article carried by Welt Online. Left Party ...
16 Dec 2015
16 Dec 2015, 00:00 Kerstine Appunn Clean Energy Wire 91tv VDMA / BWE Costs for wind power reduced Power from wind turbines in 2016/2017 will be 12 percent cheaper than in 2012/2013, according to a study commissioned by the German Engineering Federation ...
A solid 38 percent increase in gas-fired power production was the most outstanding feature of Germany’s electricity market in 2016, Marius Buchmann writes in an overview of the Federal Network Agency’s (BNetzA) Monitoring Report 2017 on the Energy Post ...
Shares in RWE renewable spin-off Innogy fell more than 13 percent after a profit warning blaming continued problems at its UK household business Npower, report Nathalie Thomas and Tobias Buck in the Financial Times. Other German utilites were also ...
The climate science and communication website klimafakten.de, the German language project of the team also working on the Clean Energy Wire, has won the NGO Environmental Action Germany’s (DUH) prestigious environmental media award in the online category. ...
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his support for the joint communiqué at the G7 summit in Canada is “sobering and a bit depressing”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Anne Will in a television interview for German public broadcaster ARD. Merkel said ...
15 May 2019, 12:21 Benjamin Wehrmann Finance Clean Energy Wire Most nations in the world have subscribed to the goal of limiting global warming and reining in climate change but the financial long-term strategy often does not match this ambition yet, a ...
Amid a growing anti-coal movement, thousands of masked protesters in hooded white jumpsuits have blocked Germany’s coal infrastructure, Paul Hockenos reports for The Nation. Find the article in English here. Get background on the question when will ...
Trees in German cities are stressed by an unusual drought that affects their ability to absorb CO 2 and convert it into oxygen, biologist Michael Blaschke says in an article written by Peter Clement in the Rheinische Post. Many trees in inner cities shed ...
The surprising and sudden departure of Peter Terium as innogy CEO was in all likelihood not on amicable terms despite the company’s assurances, writes Jürgen Flauger in the business daily Handelsblatt. The supervisory board had probably rejected Terium’s ...
Construction has begun on the pilot project of Germany’s first e-highway for trucks using catenaries (overhead electrical wires) on motorways, reports Jutta Rippegather in Frankfurter Rundschau. In 2019, five test trucks will start using the 5 kilometre ...
Not cutting down the embattled Hambach Forest would cost four to five billion euros, Rolf Martin Schmitz, head of energy company RWE, which wants to clear the forest to expand a nearby lignite mine, said in the political talk show Maybrit Illner on ...
Stefan Kapferer, head of utilities lobby BDEW, told an audience at the German Energy Conference that Germany’s energy sector should put an end to political wrangling and fully focus on the business challenges of the Energiewende, Dow Jones Newswire ...
The challenges that the US state of Ohio will face with its power grid will be similar to those that Germany is dealing with today, a situation that could provide some lessons learned, writes Kathiann Kowalski for US non-profit news site Midwest Energy ...
German utility RWE has regained a great deal of its former assertiveness since the successful stock market launch of its green subsidiary innogy in early October, writes Jürgen Flauger in Handelsblatt. “RWE already is a healthy company,” RWE’s new CEO ...
A Düsseldorf court has dismissed a suit by lobby group Environmental Action Germany (DUH) seeking a ban of certain Volkswagen diesel cars from the city’s roads, Anneli Palmen reports for Reuters. DUH argued that Volkswagen diesel cars with emissions test ...
The dispute between Germany’s transmission grid operators highlights the “partly absurd distortions” the expansion of renewable energies has brought about, writes Jürgen Flauger in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt. “The primary goal to quickly increase ...
Expanding electric transport could be used to exploit existing power grid capacity, if the right smart grid technologies are deployed and combined with the inherent flexibility in when electric vehicles (EVs) can be charged, writes the Regulatory ...
Small earth quakes, rising ground and arsenic water – the geothermal sector in Germany is often viewed with a lot of suspicion, writes Andreas Frey in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. But despite lots of bad publicity, geothermal energy can ...
Power demand across Germany is likely to grow after 2030 as increased sector coupling facilitates the shift from other energy sources, research institute Fraunhofer ISI has found in an analysis commissioned by transmission grid operators. In all scenarios ...
The head of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU) has warned government against giving up gas. Ahead of an energy industry conference organised by the Handelsblatt newspaper in Berlin Tuesday, Katherina Reiche said that for climate protection, ...
Security concerns are delaying the introduction of smart meters in Germany, IT expert Peter Welchering says in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. The intelligent technology is crucial to managing intermittent power supply from renewable ...
The deal to split innogy between E.ON and RWE so each can focus on a different area of the electricity market value chain could herald the end of the traditional model in which utilities offer everything from power production to supply, Chris Bryant ...
The head of Norway’s national pension fund, Norges Bank CEO Yngve Slyngstad, says he is optimistic that Germany’s carmakers will manage to cope with big changes in their industry as it shifts from fossil combustion engines to new engine technologies, ...
Germany and Sweden will build a 300 kilometre-long, 700 megawatt direct current power line connecting storage-rich Scandinavia with wind- and solar-powered continental Europe. “The cable improves the integration of renewable energies in the transmission ...
German coal plants on last Sunday contributed the lowest amount of electricity to the country’s power mix ever recorded in recent times, energy think tank Agora Energiewende* said in a press release. Power production from coal and lignite plants stood at ...
Utility EnBW starts a field test to find out how a large number of electric cars in a concentrated area affect grid stability, Susanne Preuß and Thiemo Heeg write in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “What happens if everyone plugs in their car when ...
29 Jun 2017, 00:00 European Union leaders have underscored their commitment to work towards a joint solution on climate issues at the G20 summit in Hamburg. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would not be easy regarding questions such as climate ...
Nearly seven years after Germany’s first offshore wind farm “alpha ventus” began operating in 2010, the industry is thriving, Stephanie Wehkamp writes in maritime trade journal Schiff und Hafen. There are now 15 fully operational windfarms in the North ...
German utility RWE could turn out as “ one of the winners of the expected grand coalition” between the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD), Maximilian Völkl writes in the business magazine Der Aktionär. Researchers like Manuel ...
Instead of phasing out the 20 dirtiest coal power plants, the German government should buy and retire EU emissions allowances, writes Friedrich Breyer, professor for economy and social policy at the University of Konstanz in an op-ed in the Süddeutsche ...
Rail industry associations and key companies have presented their joint vision of a climate friendly, cost-effective regional rail transport of the future, so that it can “bid farewell to the diesel drive”, writes the transport alliance Allianz pro ...
Germany needs to demonstrate that “climate protection and economic success are not mutually exclusive,” social democratic Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag. According to a Spiegel Online article citing the interview, ...
Cooperation and the bundling of resources can help local German utilities cope with challenges brought on by the energy transition, writes Jürgen Flauger in the Handelsblatt. Local utilities in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg have initiated cooperation ...
In the first half of the year gas power plants produced 18 percent more electricity than in the same period last year, according to an internal report by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), Manuel Berkel writes in Bizz Energy. ...
Germany’s environment minister Barbara Hendricks will leave her position once the country’s new government starts its work, Eva Quadbeck writes in the Rheinische Post. “I will not be part of the new federal government,” Hendricks told the newspaper, ...
01 Aug 2018, 17:31 With a national “diesel summit” in early August 2017, the German government tried to curb the fallout of the country’s emissions fraud scandal and avoid being sued by the European Commission over excessive air pollution. One year on, ...
The European Commission has granted Germany and several other countries a “very last deadline” to propose concrete measures on how they intend to comply with air quality standards, report Till Hoppe and Silke Kersting in the Handelsblatt. After what ...
Energy policy analyst and Green Party member Arne Jungjohann presents different scenarios for a coal phase-out in Germany, depending on the result of the general election and government coalition constellation in an article on chinadialogue. Read the ...
Germany’s environment ministry has launched the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) to strengthen internal European cooperation on climate protection, the ministry announced in a press release. The initiative will initially supply funding for 22 projects ...
Energy prices for German consumers dropped by 0.9 percent in August, following a decrease of 1.2 percent in July. While prices for petrol and heating oil went down, electricity prices remained stable, according to the European Climate Foundation’s (ECF) ...
No tax money should be used to finance the hardware retrofitting of older diesel vehicles, writes Markus Balser in an opinion piece in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Instead of subsidising the ironing out of funny business, the federal government must finally ...
14 Jan 2016
14 Jan 2016, 00:00 Kerstine Appunn Clean Energy Wire 91tv Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / Greenpeace “Expenses for green power reach new record high” Payments for renewable power have reached a record high in 2015, Andreas Mihm reports for the ...
Germany should use its public budget surplus for preventative investments in transmission grids, transportation infrastructure and other areas, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) writes in a press release. Investments that could “prepare for hard ...
The German proposal to consider free public transport in cities is an “overdue revolution” needed to shift mobility away from individual transport and thereby reducing air and noise pollution in inner cities, writes Michael Bauchmüller in an opinion piece ...
While ambitious climate policy is an opportunity for growth and prosperity, the economic costs of inaction “can hardly be quantified, but they are enormous”, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the 9 th Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. “Climate ...
German utility EnBW acquired a 37.5 percent stake in each of three offshore wind projects in Taiwan with a potential total volume of approximately 2,000 megawatt, marking the first such investment outside Europe in the group’s renewables expansion, ...
German transmission grid operators confirmed today that the Renewable Energy Act (EEG)-surcharge will rise from the current 6.35 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) to 6.88 ct/kWh in 2017. The EEG surcharge covers the difference between the wholesale market ...
The German government is concerned that short-term coal plant closures might lead to expensive compensation claims by operators, reports Klaus Stratmann in business daily Handelsblatt in a double-page article. A utility source said “we will see each other ...
Making electricity cheaper and heating and transport fuels more expensive would be a first step towards successful sector coupling in Germany, writes Stefan Schultz in an opinion piece for Spiegel Online. Renewables expansion costs for consumers would be ...
German industry associations such as BDEW, Zukunft Erdgas and the German Biogas Association released a joint statement emphasising the potential of energy source gas for climate protection. Gas could help Germany reach its climate targets in heating, ...
Regional differences in grid fees increased the power price disparities between German federal states in 2016, according to comparison website Verivox. “[The Energiewende] not only has a direct impact on the power bill through the rising Renewable Energy ...
Constructing a standardised and reliable charging infrastructure for e-cars is a key requirement for expanding the use of electric vehicles in Germany, Gero Lücking, director at energy provider LichtBlick, writes in a guest commentary for Handelsblatt. ...
Baden Württemberg’s Green environment minister Franz Untersteller has suggested partly replacing the renewable surcharge with taxpayers’ money. The high costs of early solar development shortly after the year 2000 should be financed separately by a fund, ...
The G20 is in principle “an acceptable format” to find solutions for big global challenges, but the Hamburg summit “must deliver results” given the costs associated with hosting the event, said Sweelin Heuss, managing director at Greenpeace Germany, at a ...
The European Union should do more to reduce natural gas consumption, rather than focusing on finding new suppliers and preventing the construction of the Russian-German pipeline Nord Stream 2, Green Party member and former environment minister Jürgen ...
The “arrogance” of German utility innogy in late 2017 has given way to a “ newfound modesty ” at the beginning of 2018, Helmut Bünder writes in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The company’s announcement of a cost-cutting action across ...
In a “ decisive year ” 2018, the next German government must determine the course for the country’s exit from coal-fired power generation, and deal with the looming failure to reach its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target, writes Frank-Thomas Wenzel in ...
Germany is far from phasing out coal use for its energy supply – despite its political commitment to a low-carbon economy, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) writes in a report on “The role of coal in Europe’s power mix”. The country’s dependence on ...
Germany must not enter a coal exit at the expense of power supply security and industrial competitiveness, according to Andreas Pinkwart, economy minister for the west German coal mining state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), and member of the pro ...
German environment minister Svenja Schulze backs Chancellor Angela Merkel position on the European Commission’s proposal to raise the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target. “We have set goals for 2020, which we will not reach. To then say ‘we will set ...
The European Emissions Trading System (ETS) amendment proposal passed in the European Parliament only partly recognises the threat to the competitiveness of the continent’s industry, writes Hendrik Kafsack in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
24 May 2016
24 May 2016, 00:00 Sören Amelang Clean Energy Wire 91tv Süddeutsche Zeitung “People with their own power supply will have to pay” Changes in power taxation planned by the German finance ministry could finish off business models based on renewable power ...
Managing Germany’s power grids is becoming increasingly expensive, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt. There has been a “massive increase” in so-called “re-dispatch” measures, where power plants are started or shut down to keep the grid stable, ...
Diesel cars, and older models in particular, are responsible for high levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in German city centres, according to Federal Environment Agency (UBA). 57 percent of measuring stations close to traffic showed pollution exceeding ...
The European Energy Exchange (EEX) and China Beijing Environment Exchange (CBEEX) will form a strategic partnership to jointly develop the world’s largest carbon market in China, German-based EEX writes in a press release. EEX and CBEEX will evaluate how ...
08 Nov 2017, 00:00 Talks in Bonn as technical as expected but also “unexcited, friendly and positive”, says German negotiator / Developing countries call for voluntary reporting / US should remain part of COPs / German taxpayers are financing the climate ...
The German Green Party’s first fundamental policy statement in 16 years heralds “a new stage” in the ecologic-liberal party, Cordula Ebel writes in the Tagesspiegel. The party will use a convention to start working on the paper, which is scheduled for ...
Successful and resolute climate action has a mixed record among European countries, but former trailblazer Germany today is known for trailing behind, Joachim Wille writes in the Frankfurter Rundschau. “There are still EU countries that take climate ...
Germany saw its greenhouse gas emissions dip slightly in 2017, as wind power continued to replace coal-fired electricity generation and hard coal power plants were shut down, new estimates released by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show. The data ...
Germany faces fines to the tune of two billion euros by 2020 for failing to meet emissions reduction targets in sectors not covered by the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), Andreas Mihm writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The German ...
Germany has seen a net addition of onshore wind capacity of 1,892 megawatt (MW) in the first half of 2016, the BWE and VDMA report. That is 73 percent more than in the same period in 2015 when 1,093 MW were added. Wind energy association BWE and industry ...
Germany’s grid fees on average will increase in 2017, but regional disparities and those based on the consumption volume will grow, according to a short analysis by energy think tank Agora Energiewende.* Consumers in rural areas with strong renewables ...
Germany should use its experience from the energy transition, the ambitious transformation away from fossil fuels towards renewables, to advance digitalisation, American economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin has told Handelsblatt Global in an ...
Germany’s capital, Berlin, is set to introduce a new mobility law which aims to enhance the status of low-carbon means of transportation, Klaus Kurpjuweit reports in Der Tagesspiegel. The governing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Green Party and Left ...
The right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) questions the scientific consensus that climate change is mainly caused by humans, wants the country to exit the Paris Climate Agreement and abolish the recently adopted Climate Action Plan 2050, ...
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports on a study by the German Research Institute for Energy Technology and Combustion Engines (FEV) looking at the future costs of electric vehicles. The president of the German Carmakers Association recently ...
Germany’s power labelling regulation allows electricity suppliers to declare a higher than real share of renewables in their customers’ power mix, which amounts to “greenwashing by law,” writes Jörg Staude for klimaretter.info, based on data from green ...
Intensifying regulations for energy efficiency and insulation for commercial buildings would be expensive but bring little benefit, according to a study commissioned by the German Property Federation (ZIA), writes Christian Hunziker in Die Welt. ...
A software update for manipulated diesel cars in Germany will reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 25 to 30 percent on average, making a mechanical retrofitting of affected cars unnecessary, says engine researcher Thomas Koch in an interview with Zeit ...
Industrial enterprises are increasingly using power-to-heat technology to save on energy bills, the Handelsblatt reports. A sugar factor in east Germany, for example, needs constant heat for its production processes, Jakob Struller writes. At times when ...
The EU Commission today found this year’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) reform to be in line with EU state aid rules. “The amendments to the German EEG law we approved today make sure that one of the largest renewable support schemes in the EU will be based ...
27 Jul 2015
27 Jul 2015, 00:00 Kerstine Appunn Clean Energy Wire 91tv Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) “Wind power blasts the limit” Onshore wind power development will exceed government targets, reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Provisions in the 2014 ...
German climate targets for the building sector are in danger because many house owners shy away from modernising their buildings to meet higher energy standards due to the costs involved, writes Ralph Diermann in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. ...
The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw his country’s support from the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 had outraged many commentators around the world, but the reality in many nations one year later is that they too do not seem ...
Solar power plants Germany produced more electricity than ever before in May, which brought 275 hours of sunshine instead of the average 196, the Renewable Energy Industry Initiative (IWR) reports. According to preliminary data by grid operators, solar ...
Various institutes, utilities and start-ups are testing all kinds of battery systems to find how renewable power can be stored in a future energy system that will no longer have any fossil power stations as back-up capacity, writes Holger Kroker in Welt ...
Peter Terium and Johannes Teyssen, former CEOs of Germany’s traditional utilities RWE and E.ON respectively, face each other in a new green energy rivalry after both companies split in two last year, writes Helmut Bünder in a portrait of both men in ...
German energy company RWE has rejected calls for a moratorium on forest clearing as part of lignite mining during its negotiations with the country’s coal exit commission, and said it would continue mining operations at the controversial Hambach mine, the ...
Radio and podcast moderator Holger Klein interviews Holger Hanselka, president of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), about the current state of Germany’s generational Energiewende (energy transition) project in a German online podcast for ...
Even though renewable power is now cheaper than conventional fossil power in many countries, it would be wrong to assume global energy and climate policy will become “a no-brainer,” Brigitte Knopf, secretary general of the Mercator Research Institute on ...
German energy group E.ON has launched a new large-scale solar power-plus-battery project in the United States. The company will install and operate a 10 megawatt (MW) battery for Tucson Electric Power in Arizona and also build, own and operate a 2 MW ...
A broad anti-coal alliance of local residents, church representatives, politicians, and doctors demand participation in Germany’s upcoming coal exit commission, reports Thorsten Knuf in Frankfurter Rundschau. “As residents of lignite mining areas in the ...
Peter Terium, CEO of German utility innogy, has left the RWE renewables spin-off days after the company said it will make less profit than anticipated this year and next, which had resulted in a considerable drop in share prices in the second week of ...
As the Greens exert pro-environment pressure on the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the FDP will be pulling Merkel and her party in the other direction in possible coalition talks after the German election, write Gero Rueter and Ruby Russell in an ...
Despite US president Donald Trump’s negative view of wind power, German energy companies are confident their investments in renewables in the US are not going to suffer from Trump’s policies, Jürgen Flauger and Franz Hubik write in the Handelsblatt. “We ...
German utility E.ON said retail profits fell by more than a third in the first nine months, according to a Reuters report. E.ON, currently in the process of selling its remaining stake in fossil spin-off Uniper to Finland’s Fortum, said it is hammering ...
Influential partisans of Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel continue to rebuke the economy minister for budging from plans to align grid fees across Germany, Ulrich Milde writes in Leipziger Volkszeitung. “I’m very angry that the promised fairer allocation of ...
German companies on average evaluate the influence of the energy transition on their competitiveness as marginally positive, according to an online survey of German businesses conducted by Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK). ...
Until now, there has not been a “reasonable concept for the Energiewende”, which is needed to secure Germany’s economic strength and make it more climate-friendly, Rudolf Staudigl, president and CEO of German chemical company Wacker Chemie AG, told ...
After the sudden departure of CEO Peter Terium, German utility innogy is “reviewing discretionary spending across all segments”, the company says in a press release. The spin-off of energy company RWE says it “reiterates its financial discipline targets”, ...
The grand coalition of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) disagree on the possible introduction of a price on CO₂ emissions in sectors not covered by the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS), write Jakob ...
Current plans for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA could threaten central instruments of Germany’s the energy transition, Greenpeace says in a press release. According to a leaked EU Commission draft, ...
German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel’s decision to scrap the harmonisation of grid fees across the country continues to outrage politicians in eastern Germany, Jens Tartler writes in Tagesspiegel. Heads of eastern states accuse the federal government of ...
Germany will inevitably scrap coal-fired power production even though the move has not yet been officially announced, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt. Coal-fired generating units with an installed capacity of 4,772 megawatts – the equivalent of ...
Leaked documents on energy regulation reform show that the European Commission plans to take away important competences regarding power grid management from member states, writes Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt. “Regional Operation Centres (ROC) would then ...
The divergence between type-approval and real-world emission values cost Germany 1.2 billion euros in lost motor vehicle tax revenues in 2016, according to a report by the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament. This corresponds to 13 percent of the ...
24 Jun 2019, 13:38 Benjamin Wehrmann Cars Government Handelsblatt / Stuttgarter Nachrichten / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung After a series of meetings with high-profile car industry representatives in recent years to deal with the fallout of the so ...
German climate and energy policy should be combined to overcome bitter fights between the environment ministry and the economics ministry after next year’s parliamentary election, argues sustainability expert Reinhard Loske from the University Witten ...
Germany could see a substantial drop in wind power expansion in the next years, Kathrin Witsch writes for the Handelsblatt. Capacity growth could drop from 6,500 megawatts (MW) in 2017 to merely 1,100 in 2019, she writes. The introduction of Germany’s ...
21 Dec 2016
Economy minister Sigmar Gabriel’s statement on the performance of Germany’s economy in 2016 has been a self-complacent stocktaking, Christoph Eisenring writes in an opinion piece for Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Gabriel stated he would have done “nothing” ...
German utility Uniper incurred a net loss of 538 million euros in 2017, down from a loss of 3.2 billion euros in the year before, the company said in a press release. The fossil spin-off of utility E.ON, which was partly sold to Finnish company Fortum, ...
Germany’s wind power sector employed about five times more people than the country’s coal industry in 2016, the website strom-report.de reports. About 160,000 people worked in onshore and offshore wind power in that year, compared to roughly 31,000 in the ...
An EU parliament committee has voted in favour of a mandatory public housing modernisation quota to improve energy efficiency, but such a move would hurt Germany’s poor, writes Michael Fabricius in a commentary in Die Welt. Germany’s strict regulations ...
Siemens will cut about 6,900 jobs, or about 2 percent of its global workforce, mainly at its power and gas division hit by rapid renewables growth, report Georgina Prodhan and Christoph Steitz for Reuters. “The power generation industry is experiencing ...
The manipulation of exhaust emissions values by German carmakers has cost the German state in excess of ten billion euros in lost tax revenue, the NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) says in a press release. “Many carmakers have misled their customers ...
Germany’s federal states continue to disagree on the planned reform of the country’s electricity grid fee structure, writes Klaus Stratmann in Handelsblatt. It follows economy minister Sigmar Gabriel’s backtracking on plans to standardise fees across the ...
The German government has published its 2016 version of the country’s sustainability strategy. “With the strategy, the federal government lays the groundwork for Germany to become one of the world’s most efficient and environmental-friendly economies by ...
A report by Polish think tank Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich (Centre for Eastern Studies) examines the challenges Germany faces regarding the country’s dependence on natural gas. “Natural gas plays a key role in the German economy, […] is the most important ...
Power exports at negative prices are a growing phenomenon in Germany but the country still makes a substantial profit by selling excess electricity abroad, Malte Kreutzfeldt writes in the Tageszeitung (taz). In 2017, Germany exported power worth 3.3 ...
The German Green Party has made a strengthened commitment to climate protection and energy transition a prerequisite for joining a future coalition after September’s parliamentary elections. “We are ready for talks with any party”, but there had to be a ...
Hundreds of coal workers in the eastern German region Lusatia welcomed the country’s coal exit commission during a trip to the region with protest banners saying, “good jobs are being trampled on,” Michael Bauchmüller writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. ...
A broad alliance of German business associations wants the incoming government to give building insulation a boost with tax relief in order to cut emissions. The associations said corresponding measures should be included in the coalition treaty, and be ...
08 Nov 2017, 00:00 Following intense lobbying by German carmakers, the EU has proposed car emission targets that will be insufficient to meet the country’s climate targets in the transport sector, according to environmental organisations. Critics said the ...
The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, released today, shows the urgent need for ambitious climate action, according to the German government. In a press release, environment minister Svenja Schulze said the key message of the report is that ...
Representatives of the G20 nations are meeting in Berlin today to talk about resource efficiency. The resource dialogue came out of the G20 summit in Hamburg last summer and aims to find ways of using resources such as water and land more sustainably. ...
Germany and California have agreed to ramp up their cooperation and commitment to reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement and limiting the effects of global warming, the California Environmental Protection Agency said in a press release. Germany’s State ...
29 Sep 2015
29 Sep 2015, 00:00 Carl Morris Clean Energy Wire 91tv Handelsblatt “Carmakers must not end up like RWE and E.ON” In an interview with business daily Handelsblatt, transport expert Anton Hofreiter- one of the Green party’s parliamentary leaders- argues ...
Four German ministers will “jointly work” in the country’s “coal commission” – tasked with finding a phase-out compromise – said chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) at a press conference after a two-day cabinet retreat in Meseberg near Berlin. Economy minister ...
Eleven days of climate negotiations in the city of Bonn have failed to deliver a draft text for the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement implementation guidelines. While the different text proposals had become more concrete and short, and the process of creating ...
Even though new power transmission lines in Bavaria are going to be buried underground, environmental organisation Friends of the Earth (BUND) is still opposing the grid expansion in the southern state, dpa writes. There was no need for new large power ...
The coal mining industry in Germany’s eastern region Lusatia refuses to accept that it faces a similar destiny as the country’s nuclear industry, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. Those employed in the industry feel that “brown coal, which has formed ...
A new project by grid operator Tennet will facilitate the power supply from Germany’s offshore wind parks to the densely populated regions in the country’s west, business magazine stadt+werk reports. Tennet recently started construction of the extra-high ...
Communities in the German state of Hesse will soon be able to benefit financially from wind power even if they don’t directly operate wind farms, according to a report in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Hesse’s Official Gazette has published rules on ...
The Economy Minister of Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Andreas Pinkwart, has called for compensation payments from the federal budget if Germany accelerates its coal exit, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. “The ...
Offshore wind farms produce electricity more reliably than previously thought, a study by research institute Fraunhofer IWES has shown. Wind turbines in the German North- and Baltic Sea produce power on 363 days a year, while older data from 2013 had seen ...
German utility E.ON will go ahead with listing its spin-off company Uniper in September 2016, according to a press release. The vast majority- 99.7 percent- of shareholders had agreed to the split in June and no legal case had been made against the ...
French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion of introducing a CO 2 tax leading to a minimum price of 25-30 euros per tonne of CO 2 is entering the debate between possible coalition partners in a new German government, writes Joachim Wille in the ...
The combined used of onshore and offshore wind power, solar power and a European power network can significantly can stabilise weather-related power production during periods of little wind and sunshine, Germany’s National Meteorological Service (DWD) ...
The transport ministry plans to raise the internal standing of climate protection by setting up a new department dedicated to the issue, reports Markus Balser for Süddeutsche Zeitung. A ministry spokesperson said climate protection would play an ...
Germany’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) filling station for trucks has been opened in the city of Ulm. Energy company Uniper and transporter manufacturer Iveco operate the test facility. Uniper announced that it envisaged building a network of LNG ...
The first day-ahead auction on the EPEX SPOT power exchange after the split of the common power price zone between Austria and Germany, which becomes effective today (1 October), saw higher prices for Austria than Germany, writes the Austrian Energy ...
Almost all coal plants in the EU will make losses by 2030, according to a Carbon Tracker analysis, Jess Shankleman and Rachel Morison report for Bloomberg. Because battery storage will increasingly provide power at times of peak demand, and because the EU ...
Germany’s eastern European neighbours and Russia are not following the phase-out of nuclear energy that is part of Germany’s energy transition, writes historian Anna Veronika Wendland in a guest article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Eastern ...
German environmental organisations call on the European Commission to continue the official infringement procedure against Germany regarding high nitrogen dioxide (NOx) levels resulting from road traffic. In a letter ahead of a meeting with affected ...
Angela Merkel’s decision to run for a fourth term as chancellor is a reason for delight for Germany’s right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), writes Jens Schneider in a commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Merkel embodies everything the AfD ...
Thanks to renewables, we don’t need nuclear energy to protect the climate, nor coal power to enable the nuclear exit, argues Rüdiger Haude, spokesperson of a solar support association, in politics weekly der Freitag. But several reforms of the Renewable ...
E.ON’s path to a new energy age is paved in red ink, Helmut Bünder writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. E.ON’s initial public offering of its conventional energy unit Uniper in September could decide whether the company continues to bleed. Uniper ...
Coal-fired power generation “looks set to remain the backbone” of Germany’s energy supply, writes Vera Eckert for Reuters. This contrasts with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s international ambition as climate protection role model, she adds. Read the article ...
21 Dec 2018, 11:58 The German government has said it will use its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council to spotlight the security implications of climate change. After the recent shift in climate policy by some permanent ...
The expansion of the gas pipeline Nord Stream, linking Germany and Russia via the Baltic Sea, angers Poland and the Baltic States as they fear Russia’s influence in Europe will be made stronger by the project, WirtschaftsWoche Online reports. “This is no ...
The German government will introduce a climate protection law to ensure the country reaches its 2030 climate targets, but achieving these goals will be “very, very challenging”, said Chancellor Angela Merkel during her annual summer press conference. The ...
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has started the sixth round of auctions for large-scale ground-mounted PV arrays. It increased the auction volume to 160 megawatts because a number of winners from previous auctions said they would not realise their ...
German administrative districts (Landkreise) want to be more independent of energy imports, writes Angela Schmid in WirtschaftsWoche. The rise of renewables had brought new possibilities to many regions. “In plain language this means: Instead of ...
State support for combined heat and power with a capacity of 1-50 megawatts that are used for self-consumption will be abolished, writes Andreas Mihm in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This would hit energy-intensive industries especially hard because ...
Focusing on e-mobility is the cheapest long-term way for Germany to achieve decarbonised transportation, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) writes in a press release. A study commissioned by the UBA and carried out by the Öko-Institut found that a ...
Onshore wind power in Germany will be expanded beyond the industry’s expectations and federal government plans in the coming years, writes Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt, based on data provided by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA). Investors who had ...
German utility Uniper’s CEO Klaus Schäfer does not see “the advantages of a big consolidation in the market” for his company, he said in a telephone conference when presenting first half year results, writes Helmut Bünder for Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
The German government will extend current tax breaks for natural gas used as fuel because it wants natural gas to play a role in the Energiewende in the mobility sector, the state secretary for energy, Rainer Baake, said ahead of the round table on ...
Siemens has launched a new offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 8 megawatts, promising a 10 per cent increase in annual energy production compared to its previous 7MW model, reports BusinessGreen. The German engineering giant, currently in the process ...
The Higher Administrative Court in Münster has put a temporary stop to the clearing of the Hambacher forest in North-Rhine Westphalia where energy company RWE wants to extend a lignite mine, Marlon Gego reports in the Aachener Zeitung. Friends of the ...
The German federal parliament has adopted a new power market law. The reform includes the continuation of an energy-only-market with additional capacity reserves. The new rules will also include retiring 13 percent of lignite power station capacity into a ...
It is embarrassing that the former eco-champion Germany has taken a break in the global competition for the fastest and best energy transition, writes Joachim Wille in a commentary for klimaretter.info. “The German government, which fought so ardently and ...
Only 12 percent of Germans say they believe that the country will find a location for a final nuclear repository by 2031, as projected by a new law, according to a survey by German Atomic Forum (DAtF), an organisation lobbying for the non-military use of ...
German engineering giant Siemens is among the top companies listed on the global clean energy ranking “Clean 200,” reports Andrea Vittorio for Bloomberg. The “Clean 200” by California non-profit As You Sow and researchers Corporate Knights, ranks ...
Major German utility EnBW confirmed its forecast for the year 2016 of an operating profit (adjusted EBITDA) five to ten percent below last year’s result [2.1 billion euros], the company said in a press release. After the first nine months of the year, the ...
German utility innogy plans to expand the country’s e-car charging infrastructure by enabling private companies to provide their own charging stations to the public with a new digital platform called eMarketplace, the group says in a press release. “Not ...
New guidelines for the industry in the German government’s Climate Action Plan 2050 bear traces of a planned economy, writes Christoph Eisenring in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He cites measures such as expanding the area of arable land reserved for ecological ...
26 Jul 2016
With the energy transition the amount of decentralised produced power and the number of distributed consumers is increasing which is putting pressure on the distribution grid, says the BNE, an association of independent energy suppliers and service firms. ...
The EU’s plan to allow fuel from felled trees to qualify as renewable energy could accelerate climate change, writes Felix Creutzig of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in a guest commentary in the Süddeutsche ...
Growing public opposition to wind parks near residential areas is endangering the support needed for the energy transition, according to an article in Welt am Sonntag. Many Germans who live near wind parks “no longer experience the Energiewende as a ...
German utility E.ON could finish this year with another record loss, company sources told German business newspaper Handelsblatt. The sources attributed the potential loss to rising costs of the country’s nuclear exit, spinning off its conventional energy ...
Seventy German municipalities exceeded nitrogen oxide air pollution limits in 2017, down from 90 the previous year, writes the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). This development points in “the right direction,” said UBA President Maria Krautzberger, “but ...
To make meaningful progress on climate change, fossil fuel money had to be taken out of politics to make it a non-partisan issue, German political scientist Arne Jungjohann said at a clean energy discussion in Ottawa, writes Elizabeth McSheffrey in ...
Digital technology that interconnects renewable power sources with vehicles, household appliances and other devices that use electricity is becoming an increasingly important component of Germany’s Energiewende, the shift away from fossil and nuclear ...
In their third grand coalition, Germany’s governing parties CDU/CSU and SPD are showing less interest in environmental protection than ever before, Veit Medick, Ralf Neukirch, Michael Sauga and Gerald Traufetter write in Der Spiegel. The coalition ...
Germany’s major utility RWE intends to pay its 6.8 billion euro-contribution to a state-administered fund for financing the storage of nuclear waste without delay, raising questions about its actual financial status, Michael Bauchmüller writes in ...
Germany and Europe have to ramp up investment in battery cell production in order to prepare their automotive industries for a looming rapid expansion of electric vehicles, Germany’s state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs & ...
E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen has warned that right-wing populists might campaign against Germany’s energy transition if power prices do not fall. The anti-immigrant AfD already has discovered the Energiewende as topic, Teyssen told regional newspaper WAZ. ...
The Green Party’s plan for phasing out coal in Germany makes sense and is overdue, writes energy expert Claudia Kemfert, from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in a commentary for Hamburger Abendblatt. “We have a massive power oversupply, ...
“Little will change on the European continent due to the decision of the British people, including when it comes to the climate and energy agency,” writes Sabrina Schulz in the blog of climate and energy think tank E3G. In Germany, the fight over the ...
Germany’s buyer’s premium for e-cars is obstructing energy transition in the transportation sector, as it fosters the sale of private cars rather than sustainable mobility concepts, a study commissioned by Greenpeace has found. In order to ensure that e ...
Battery-powered urban buses will eventually replace combustion engines in Germany’s public transportation systems, writes Christoph M. Schwarzer in Die Zeit. He says they will be cleaner and become significantly cheaper in the near future. “Rapidly ...
Installing PV arrays on private homes and consuming the generated electricity is financially attractive, but will not have a large effect on Germany’s power system as a whole, according to a study by consultancy Prognos commissioned by energy think-tank ...
Coal will continue to be an important component of Germany’s power supply for at least another three decades, Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer told news agency Reuters. As an industrialised country, Germany “cannot afford to do without this ...
The Grenfell Tower fire that killed at least 79 people in London last summer has led to scepticism of the insulation industry and made it more difficult to achieve the German energy transition goal of greater efficiency in the heating sector, Mechtild ...
Cheap German power exports hinder neighbouring countries’ energy transitions, Austrian environment minister Andrä Rupprechter told German weekly Der Spiegel. “Germany produces too much cheap electricity that other countries like Austria have to accept. ...
A broad alliance of trade unions, consumer, renewable, and industry associations has called on the future German government to use the federal budget to finance “at least parts of the Energiewende costs”. “We need a new financing system for the cost ...
Troubled German energy company E.ON is listing its conventional power division Uniper but the move lacks a convincing plan, Angela Hennersdorf writes in WirtschaftsWoche. Uniper comprises commodity trading operations and more than 300 coal and gas power ...
Hard coal power plant operator and one of Germany’s biggest power suppliers Steag announced that it will leave the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) by the end of 2016, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The industry association ...
While more than 90 percent of Germans support the country’s energy transition, only 22 percent of households have switched to a provider of 100 percent green electricity despite having had the opportunity for the past 15 years, Craig Morris writes on ...
The two major German insurance companies Allianz and Munich Re have until now often been viewed as “being in the camp of climate activists”, but a study by NGO Unfriend Coal now suggests both companies are quite active in insuring Poland’s coal industry, ...
The energy and coal industry is happy about the new, weakened language in the draft version of the Climate Action Plan 2050, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes. Share prices of energy companies E.ON and RWE have increased in the past days – against ...
Germany is prepared as much as any other country to steer its own and the global community’s development onto a more sustainable path, but it has to increase its ambitions and efforts to tap into this potential, government advisors affiliated with the ...
