Offering free public transport in inner cities to improve air quality is a proposal by a “disoriented federal government” that lacks a concept, agreement with cities and federal states and a proposal to finance the endeavour, Manfred Schäfers writes in an ...
Interest in concluding green power contracts is waning in Germany, Ralf Geißler writes on the website of public broadcaster MDR. Power contracts with a ’green tariff‘ that finances renewable power sources were most popular in the wake of the 2011 ...
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, can cover a big share of its growing energy demand with solar power, the German industry lobby group BSW Solar says in a press release. In an in-depth analysis of Nigeria’s solar power potential ...
Germany needs the new Russian-German natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 because ambitious climate targets make gas “an even more important energy source” and reserves in Germany and the Netherlands are decreasing, write Christian Democratic (CDU) ...
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 ...
The focus on climate protection by activists and politicians could overshadow necessary efforts in environmental protection, Ferdinan Knauß writes in the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche. “The preservation of biological diversity, of natural habitats and ...
The Association of German Family Businesses has criticised the Federal Network Agency’s (BNetzA) decision to increase the maximum remuneration rate for onshore wind power auctions, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt. The business lobby says the BNetzA ...
In 2015 and 2016, Germany’s government-owned KfW bank issued nine ‘ green bonds ’ worth a total of 6.5 billion euros to finance renewable energies, KfW said in its report on the environmental and social impacts of these bonds. With a market share of 61 ...
Carmakers’ successful lobbying for watered-down EU car emission limits is a scandal that reveals the industry’s continuing hold over politicians – even after Dieselgate, Markus Balser writes in an op-ed for Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Within a week, the most ...
12 Dec 2017
The fact that offshore wind turbines produce more power than previously thought is good news in the long run but might currently rather lead to more problems, Jens Heitmann writes in an opinion piece for the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. “If the ...
German rail company Deutsche Bahn has launched a pilot project in Hamburg in which public transit users can call a shuttle to pick them up in front of their house, Spiegel Online reports. Users can order the electric vehicles through an application on ...
Of all meat and dairy corporations, German companies Deutsches Milchkontor and Tönnies Lebensmittel are among the top 25 contributors to climate change, according to a new report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the non ...
The incoming German government must not agree to phase out coal-fired power production in exchange for concessions to diesel cars, Michael Vassiliadis, head of Germany’s largest mining trade union, IG BCE, said in an interview with the General-Anzeiger ...
German energy companies RWE and E.ON have agreed to a deal in which E.ON will buy RWE's green power subsidiary innogy and the two utilities will exchange large parts of their assets to focus their activities. The deal would drastically reshape ...
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 ...
The pro-business party FDP stands out at the ongoing Jamaica coalition talks for Germany’s next federal government with its “astonishing claims on climate and energy”, Malte Kreutzfeldt writes in left-wing newspaper Die Tageszeitung (taz). Remarks by FDP ...
Germany is an industrial leader with a reputation for being “a righteous leader in climate protection”- but a closer look at its actions suggests it deserves to be labelled a “climate change hypocrite”, Paul Hockenos writes in Foreign Policy. While it may ...
Several research institutes and environmental NGOs, among them the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Wuppertal Institute, WWF Germany, and Germanwatch, have signed a petition asking the next German government to reconsider the use ...
Eleven consumer and tenant associations are putting pressure on energy minister Peter Altmaier to reform the tenant power law, Kathrin Witsch writes for Handelsblatt. The law, which was to animate landlords to install solar panels and offer their tenants ...
Germany’s cyber crime agency in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) warns that attacks on energy providers in the country could lead to a Europe-wide blackout, news website Spiegel Online reports. According to an internal BKA document seen by Spiegel ...
The western German city of Frankfurt must introduce a ban on older diesel vehicles as part of a plan to improve air quality, the Federal Administrative Court ruled, reports news agency Reuters. The country’s financial centre must from February 2019 ban ...
If the extensive deal between E.ON and RWE goes through, “old rivals" will "become partners under the pressure of the energy transition” and create “a new order in the German energy industry” by organising a clear “division of labour”, Helmut ...
Back in 2016, the German Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI) pushed for a legal provision blocking environmental organisations from taking legal action against the model approval and sale of diesel cars with high emissions, according to a letter obtained ...
Audi CEO Rupert Stadler has been arrested over allegations that he played a role in Volkswagen (VW) Group’s diesel emissions cheating scandal, the Financial Times reports, a week after Munich prosecutors raided his private residence. Stadler has served as ...
The environmental movement must fight the internal combustion engine just as hard as it does diesel, Martin Unfried, expert at the European Institute of Public Administration, writes in a commentary in the tageszeitung (taz). Unfortunately, the diesel ...
A recent decision by the Danish parliament allowing a ban on construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia on Danish maritime territory in the Baltic Sea highlights divisions between Berlin and other European states over the ...
Russian gas company Novatek and Belgian group Fluxys, a natural gas transmission system operator, are planning to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the German Baltic port city of Rostock, Andreas Meyer writes in the Ostsee-Zeitung. According ...
Energy experts in Germany’s most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have slammed plans by the state government to tighten regulations for the construction of new onshore wind power installations, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The plan ...
In response to an inquiry from the Green Party, the governing coalition has expressed its opposition to geoengineering, according to an article in the Tagesspiegel. Geoengineering refers to the controversial intervention in the Earth’s climate system, ...
The German federal government supports the expansion of gas pipelines from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to Europe via Turkey, a government official said, the Handelsblatt reports. The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline ...
An article by Axel Bojanowski for Spiegel lists some of the One Planet Summit’s achievements as follows: World Bank announces it will stop supporting oil and gas production as of 2019 From 2018, the World Bank will publish all the projects it funds in the ...
The industrialised world has created the problem of climate change and now must work to solve it, Johannes Teyssen, CEO of electric utility E.ON, writes in a guest commentary in the Handelsblatt. Mitigating global warming would not only improve the lives ...
In 2018, a total of 1,908 German businesses at 2,421 locations will be largely exempt from having to pay the country’s renewables levy (EEG surcharge) on electricity, writes the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (Bafa), which is in ...
The heat wave gripping Germany has seen households and businesses across Germany purchase record numbers of air conditioners, RP Online reports. The Fachverband Gebäude-Klima (FGK), an association with 300 member companies active in the building and ...
A study by the Öko-Institut for the Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI) and Germanwatch says Germany has little chance of generating electricity close enough to consumers to make planned grid expansion unnecessary. In a meta-study comparing the conclusions ...
Train driver assistance systems could make passenger and freight rail even more environmentally friendly, cutting energy use by 15 percent, according to a study by the Pro-Rail Alliance lobby group. “Driver assistance systems for rail transport are an ...
The COP23 climate conference in Bonn could be more important than ever for the “ self-proclaimed climate champion ” Germany, writes Petra Pinzler in a commentary for Die Zeit. Because the November summit will likely coincide with negotiations to form a ...
Germany has lost its role as a pioneer in the global fight against climate change, environment minister Svenja Schulze said in an interview with Deutsche Welle. The intra-parliamentary fight over immigration has also distracted attention from other issues ...
07 Nov 2017, 00:00 Conference off to a reassuring start, final agenda passed / Developing nations want to talk about pre2020 climate action by industrialised states / German companies call for a coal exit path and climate friendly regulation / Emission ...
Volkswagen plans to launch all-electric car sharing services. The carmaker said the platform dubbed “WE” will start rolling out various on-demand services in Germany in 2019. “These services are to be extended to major cities in Europe, North America and ...
People living in Germany’s inner cities are the winners of the landmark court ruling on diesel driving bans, writes Malte Kreutzfeld in a commentary in the tageszeitung. “It is no longer allowed to ignore their right to breathe clean air. In case of doubt ...
With the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), the last German authority has approved the construction and operation of the contentious Russian-German Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. The interests of shipping and the maritime environment do ...
The economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) will push for a market-oriented system to pay for renewable energy, and wants to get rid of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) and the surcharge for renewables on consumer power prices, Hermann Otto Solms, ...
Volkswagen has opened a new assembly plant and put into operation new mobility services like car sharing in Rwanda, according to a company press release. Volkswagen plans to assemble up to 5,000 cars per year at its new plant, and seeks to play a leading ...
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 ...
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 ...
Plans by the government of the federal state of Hesse to build wind turbines in protected forest areas have sparked opposition from some environmentalists, according to an article in Die Welt. They say the government is disregarding the protection of ...
The European Commission estimates the necessary investment needed to achieve its target of reducing the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 at 180 billion euros per year, writes Markus Frühauf in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Brussels ...
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has revamped its SMARD platform that illustrates data on Germany’s electricity market, the German ministry for the economy & energy (BMWi) says in a press release. All data is now available in English and can be ...
The conversion to a new emissions test called the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) could cost German manufacturers billions of euros, Martin Seiwert writes in the WirtschaftsWoche. The German car industry has invested tens of ...
Despite unfavourable wind conditions, the commissioning of new offshore and onshore wind farms increased sales and earnings from renewables at German utility E.ON in the first half of 2018, reports Bernd Radowitz in Recharge. Sales in the renewables ...
In a televised town hall campaign event, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised voters that Germany would find ways to meet its ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020. One young first-time voter asked about shutting down coal ...
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 parliament, the Bundestag, has elected Chancellor Angela Merkel to a fourth term in office. Merkel, who will head a renewed grand coalition between her conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was elected ...
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, ...
It is in the interests of both Europe and the Russian people to halt the German-Russian natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2, writes Gerhard Gnauck in an opinion piece on Welt Online. It would increase the EU’s dependence on Russia as a major energy ...
The concentration of harmful nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) emissions are above the legal limit in 116 cities and municipalities in Germany, NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) says in a press release. The NGO’s analysis included 41 cities that so far had not ...
Free public transport, blue badges, hardware retrofits- every day a different solution is touted to reconcile cars with the environment in Germany’s heated diesel debate, writes Marc Beise in a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. But a congestion ...
The effects of climate change on the yield of European wind turbines are far less clear than suggested by a recent study from the University of Colorado, Piotr Heller writes for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The study, published Nature ...
The buying appetite of installation operators participating in Germany’s EUA (EU allowances) auctions last year increased, even though their share of the total successful bidders remained steady compared to 2016, reports Mike Szabo for the Carbon Pulse, ...
Germany’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050 means the remaining 5-20 percent are being “left undiscussed”, Oliver Geden, head of the EU division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), ...
The world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Siemens-Gamesa, has downgraded its business prospects without specifying the reasons for the adjusted prognosis, the Frankfurter Allgmeine Zeitung reports. The German-Spanish company that merged about half a ...
Germany’s new economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier has pledged to maximise focus on the extension of the country’s power grid as a priority of his work. “The Energiewende will succeed if we get ahead with the grid extension,” Altmaier told ...
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 ...
The growing importance of wind and solar power generation in Germany leads to the shutdown of another coal plant, Jürgen Flauger writes in Handelsblatt. Energy provider STEAG will close the hard coal-fired power plant at its founding location in Lünen in ...
It is high-time for Germany to strongly push for the transition to zero-emissions transport, writes Green Party co-chair Cem Özdemir in a guest commentary for Zeit Online. “Pretending” that the end of diesel technology was still decades away is a “highly ...
German energy company RWE has secured a “substantial annual capacity” of a planned German terminal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), reports news agency Reuters. RWE reached an agreement with LNG Terminal GmbH, the joint venture that aims to build ...
Due to the low number of applications for e-car buyer’s premium, the German federal government should rededicate unused funds to expanding the country’s charging infrastructure, Andreas Obersteller, head of the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and ...
The energy transition in the building sector can be implemented most efficiently without a focus on any one technology, writes the German Energy Agency in a joint study with several associations and companies. “All available efficiency technologies must ...
The German government is working on a concept to reduce emissions from diesel cars in German cities which will include swap and retrofit options, said transport minister Andreas Scheuer during a live video chat on Instagram. “We are currently talking ...
Dutch-German transmission system operator TenneT will invest 28 billion euros in new power grid infrastructure over the next ten years because of energy transition targets in Germany and the Netherlands which will lead to an increase in renewable power, ...
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 ...
24 Nov 2017, 00:00 For the first time in its post-war history, Germany struggles to form a stable government coalition two months after voters cast their ballot in September's elections. The so-called Jamaica coalition talks' collapse plunges ...
An increase in transport sector emissions drove up Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions for the second time in a row in 2016, according to the the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). At 909.4 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalent, emissions were 2.6 million ...
The German government does not know when smart meters will be launched across the country, an answer by the government to a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party reveals. The government says that the “technical capabilities” for the technology’s roll ...
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 EU should quickly introduce a minimum price to the Emissions Trading System (ETS), because the current prices do not create the necessary incentives for low-carbon assets, according to a policy paper published jointly by the Mercator Research ...
The European Union’s car industry is not in charge of proposing its own regulation for CO₂ emissions limits, said the German environment ministry (BMUB) in reaction to a proposal by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). “These ...
A broad combination of policies ranging from straightforward CO₂ pricing to regulation of water and forest protection, as well as lifestyle changes such as eating less meat, may be the best way to meet climate-stabilisation targets alongside most of the ...
While it is unfortunate that Germany’s Federal Administrative Court has postponed a ruling on diesel driving bans aimed at cutting air pollution in cities, the court case has already been a “slap in the government’s face,” according to German transport ...
The daily routines of electric vehicle owners are made more complicated and expensive by high charging rates and few charging station, according to a press release from LichtBlick. The green energy provider writes that, in some cases, seven of the 11 ...
The political feasibility of carbon pricing depends more on public acceptance than on issues related to cost efficiency and economic benefits, a new study published by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change has found. In an ...
Swedish utility Vattenfall expects Germany’s capital Berlin to boast about 250,000 electric cars by the end of the next decade, compared to 1,700 currently registered in the city, Jens Tartler writes in the Tagesspiegel. Vattenfall’s Thomas Schäfer says ...
Germany is facing greater pressure from the United States, central and eastern European countries, and the European Commission to cancel Nord Stream 2, the controversial pipeline project that would lead to more German imports of Russian natural gas, ...
A growing population and the economic boom pushed up Germany’s total energy use by almost one percent last year, but the country’s CO 2 emissions likely stagnated due to the rising share of renewables and an increase in gas use, according to energy market ...
Germany’s biggest power consumer, Deutsche Bahn (DB), has set itself new climate protection targets ahead of the COP23 UN climate conference in Bonn next month, Henrik Mortsiefer reports for the Tagesspiegel. The company – including its global logistics ...
The expansion of wind power in Germany’s southern state Bavaria could soon fall close to zero, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. According to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), there have been just four applications for construction of new wind ...
An energy transition in mobility could pose the same challenges for German carmakers that the power transition has posed for big German utilities, writes Michael Bauchmüller in an opinion piece for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “If the carmakers don’t pay ...
German NGOs, including Germanwatch and WWF, say the recommendations contained in the final report by the EU’s High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance (HLEG) are a “key step toward using the finance market’s leverage effects for climate protection.” ...
German energy industry associations doubt that the so-called smart digital meters that measure and record electricity consumption in households and firms could be introduced by the beginning of 2020 as planned, Andreas Mihm writes for the Frankfurter ...
Climate protection is the main economic pillar of the environmental industry in Germany, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) says in a press release. Companies producing climate-friendly materials and products, as well as offering climate protection ...
Green Party head Cem Özdemir has said his party will call for the introduction of a blue badge to be awarded only to lower-emission vehicles, in the upcoming exploratory coalition talks, Konstantin Schwarz writes for Stuttgarter Nachrichten. Such a badge ...
The storm “Herwart” that hit Germany on the last weekend in October caused power prices to turn negative due to an excessive supply of wind power, thereby exposing “the glaring malfunction” of the country’s energy transition, Nando Sommerfeldt and Holger ...
It is true that Russia is Germany’s biggest energy supplier but German consumers are not “captives”, writes Andreas Mihm in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “To the dismay of climate politicians, an abundancy of oil, gas and coal is ...
Southern German utility EnBW has introduced a one-for-all charging card for e-cars that will enable its customers to use a network of 8,000 charging stations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, regardless of the operator of the station. E-car drivers ...
The EEG surcharge – Germany’s levy to support renewables expansion that consumers pay with their power bill – will fall to 6.792 cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) in 2018, from 6.88 ct/kWh in 2017. The country’s four transmission grid operators (TSOs) ...
The landmark court ruling on diesel driving bans causes “alarm in diesel country,” because 60 to 80 percent of all cars sold by Audi, Daimler, and BMW in Germany in the past years had a diesel engine, writes Thomas Fromm in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “This ...
Hurricane Irma's devastation in the Caribbean will fuel small island nations' demand for support from the world’s large greenhouse-gas-emitting countries for damages attributable to climate change at the UN climate conference in Bonn in November ...
Developers of smart meters are complaining that the German state’s licensing of the technology is taking much too long due to security concerns and increasing the risk that the country will fall behind its European neighbours, many of which are much more ...
Many electricity suppliers in Germany will not lower their prices in 2018, even though falling wholesale power prices and grid fees mean they have leeway to do so, Thomas Öchsner reports for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Germany’s average 2017 power price was ...
Germany's unusually hot summer has dealt a blow to the country’s wind power output, with the yield in July 2018 being 20 percent lower than in the same month last year, Jürgen Flauger and Kathrin Witsch write in Handelsblatt. While solar power plants ...
Germany’s cities have warned for over a year that the car industry is headed for a front crash since first court hearings in the context of emissions limit violations by diesel cars had started, Jasper van Altenbockum writes in an op-ed for Frankfurter ...
German wind power company Max Bögl Wind has built the world’s tallest wind power turbine near the southern German city of Stuttgart. In a press release, the company says the turbine, with a hub height of 178 metres and a total height of over 246 metres, ...
Germany’s political culture has ceased to vividly debate environmental challenges because “ everybody has become green nowadays ”, Bernhard Pötter writes in an op-ed for Tageszeitung (taz). “But the price for this is high,” he says, arguing that a ...
Germany’s carmakers have retrofitted the software of about 2.5 million out of a total of 5.3 million diesel cars eligible for a retrofitting to lower their emissions, Handelsblatt reports. The country’s largest carmaker, Volkswagen, has carried out over ...
The price for onshore wind power fell a further ten percent in Germany’s third auction for the technology to an average of 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. The federal grid agency (BNetzA) said the winning bids came almost exclusively from projects proposed ...
The EU Environment Council has agreed on its position regarding emissions targets for member states from 2021 to 2030, aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions in sectors outside the scope of the EU emissions trading system (ETS). For Germany’s buildings ...
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 ...
For now, Germany’s southern neighbour Austria benefits greatly from exports of cheap German power, but this arrangement is about to come to an end, Irmgard Kirschko writes in the Austrian newspaper Kurier. An “artificial shortage” at the border, which is ...
Heating systems that use renewable energies were installed in 65 percent of the just under 110,100 new residential buildings completed in Germany in 2017, writes the Federal Statistical Office in a press release. Forty-three percent of new buildings used ...
Germany’s leading lobbyist for the car industry, Matthias Wissmann, says that those opponents of the use of cars who today fight for the condemnation of diesel cars in the wake of the emissions fraud scandal will eventually turn against electric cars as ...
04 Sep 2017, 00:00 For the second time within one month, Germany’s government has held a “diesel summit” to discuss the consequences of the emissions fraud scandal of the country’s major carmakers. After a first summit in early August with industry ...
The Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and WWF Germany have developed a new online platform that assesses the climate impact of financial regulations in Germany and the EU. The Finance Fit for Paris tracker reviews laws and current measures to ...
Germany’s distribution grid operators are calling for a legal reform to limit the transmission grid operators’ (TSO) powers to intervene in distribution grids, Klaus Stratmann writes for Handelsblatt. An increasingly decentralised power supply due to the ...
Wholesale power prices in Germany fell by four percent in 2017, price comparison website Verivox says in a press release. Prices at the electricity exchange EEX fell to 31.3 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to 32.6 eur/MWh in the year before, ...
People living in Germany are the most worried about climate change in a comparison of 18 countries by the British agency National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). While 44 percent of Germans say they are very or extremely worried about climate change, ...
“The climate torch passes from Chancellor Angela Merkel to President Emmanuel Macron,” Christine Coester writes for Handelsblatt Global in a piece about the One Planet Summit. While Merkel struggled to form a government back home, Macron was taking over ...
In light of fears that the country will miss its 2020 climate targets by a wider margin than previously anticipated, climate protection has become a key issue in the ongoing coalition talks to form the next German government, writes Michael Bauchmüller in ...
More than three million e-cars are registered worldwide, with 1.2 million in China, followed by 750,000 in the United States. Germany ranks eighth with 93,000 registered e-cars, says the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg ...
An internal paper from the German environment ministry shows the country will miss the 2020 greenhouse gas emission target set by the European Union for sectors not covered by the EU emission trading system (ETS), Jakob Schlandt writes in energy and ...
The German Green Party’s co-leader, Cem Özdemir, has said that climate protection, European integration, and social justice are the topics his party will be most adamant on in a possible coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the economic ...
Almost a quarter of German households are “actively participating” in the Energiewende by using technologies such as solar PV systems, battery storages, e-cars, or heat pumps, according to the “Energy Transition Barometer 2018” published by state-owned ...
The majority of Germany’s heating systems are older than 20 years and must be refurbished, the Federal Association of Chimney Sweepers says according to a dpa article carried by Die Welt. If heating systems older than 15 years are included, more than 70 ...
This summer’s heatwave should finally make people feel the meaning of global warming and understand that we urgently need to fight it, writes Maike Brülls in a commentary in taz newspaper. “Let’s see the summer 2018 as an opportunity. Let’s keep cool ...
German environment minister Svenja Schulze has called on the country’s energy-intensive industries to present plans to reduce their carbon emissions, Handelsblatt reports. At a meeting in early July, the Social Democrat (SPD) will meet representatives of ...
French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a European price of 25-30 euro per tonne of CO₂ has received mixed reactions in Germany, reports Andreas Mihm in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. German utilities argue that the proposed scheme would put the ...
Since the federal government has set out to extend its energy transition project into the transport sector, car use in Germany has not changed, writes Friederike Meier in Klimareporter. Unlike neighbouring countries the Netherlands and Denmark, where a ...
In 2016, the German power supply system was more reliable than ever before, according to the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE). The average German power consumer had to cope without electricity for 11.5 minutes, ...
31 Jul 2018
Energy consumption in Germany decreased by one percent in the first half of 2018, compared to the same period in the previous year, the energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen said on Tuesday. After the first three months, there had been a five ...
The energy industry in Germany are the “good guys” of the energy transition, as it is probably the only sector on track to do its part to meet the country’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020, Johannes Kempmann, president of ...
Most Germans are more afraid of looming driving bans for polluting cars in inner cities than of the air pollution associated with these cars, says Klaus Müller, head of Germany’s federal consumer advice centre association vzbv, in an interview with Zeit ...
The surplus on Germany’s green energy account started to grow again in October, and at 3.4 billion euros it far exceeds last year’s October surplus of 1.9 billion euros, reports Sandra Enkhardt for pv magazine. At the same time, German wind and solar ...
Germany’s right-wing national conservative party Alternative for Germany (AfD) calls the human effect on global warming into question and wants to scrap efforts to cut carbon emissions, Maria Fiedler writes in Tagesspiegel. “There have been cold and warm ...
Germany’s grid agency BNetzA has said it will lower the maximum support rate in the second round of auctions for offshore wind power. Support will be reduced to a maximum of 10 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), after average support in the first round ...
Global warming is a phenomenon whose nature makes it very unattractive for the fast-paced news business, Dagmar Dehmer writes in Der Tagesspiegel. “The events are complex and non-linear”, Dehmer says, arguing that climate change as a news event is ...
A pilot project by Dutch grid operator TenneT and German company Sonnen is meant to test power grid stabilisation with blockchain technology based on Sonnen’s decentralised home energy storage systems, TenneT says in a press release. TenneT will integrate ...
Rather than big flagship projects, “subversive innovations” could prove more successful in making a breakthrough in the decarbonisation of the world’s economies, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) told ...
The German government was much too soft on carmakers at the diesel summit in Berlin, writes Petra Pinzler in an opinion piece for Zeit Online. “In Germany, laws are valid for some, summits are held for others,” writes Pinzler. Even at the summit, ...
Imports of natural gas to Germany rose by 19.5 percent between January and August 2017 compared to the same period last year, the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (Bafa) says in a press release. The country imported 3,060,298 ...
Germany’s biggest power producers continue to lose market share, says a new monitoring report published by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) and the Federal Cartel Office (BKartA). "Market concentration among conventional electricity suppliers was ...
A broad alliance of actors that includes environmental NGOs, trade unions, and the efficiency industry has urged the German government to honour its coalition pledge to support measures to lower the energy consumption of buildings. The alliance says it is ...
The German steel industry has found in Chancellor Angela Merkel an ally “in its fight against further CO₂-reduction requirements,” Andreas Macho writes for WirtschaftsWoche. In her annual summer press conference, Merkel said “solutions had yet to be found ...
The German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations Chairman Wolfgang Büchele called U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Russia would be able to control German gas markets following the pipeline’s completion “factually wrong and politically ...
The German economy ministry (BMWi) has visibly lost influence under three consecutive coalition governments led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, Heike Goebel writes in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But Merkel's CDU party now claims ...
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 ...
Environmental organisations have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel and her negotiating partners at the ongoing Jamaica coalition talks for a new German government of risking a “climate policy blackout”. Merkel had to make “a clear commitment” to the ...
The new Federation for Electric Shipping and Charging Infrastructure has set out to wane ship owners in Germany’s capital off diesel engines and to introduce e-boats instead to reduce inner city air pollution, the federation says in a press release and on ...
The German government will likely not join a lawsuit against the planned nuclear power plant Paks in Hungary, Thorsten Knuf writes for the Frankfurter Rundschau. Austria has filed a lawsuit that challenges the plant’s licensing by the European Commission, ...
New US sanctions against Russia will have serious consequences for the energy supply in Germany and Europe, writes Kirsten Westphal of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in a guest commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The ...
The U.K. home delivery business Milk & More has ordered 200 electric vans produced by the Deutsche Post subsidiary StreetScooter, Deutsche Post DHL Group said in a press release. Milk & More aims to make the delivery of milk and other fresh ...
The construction of new wind and solar power facilities is more economic than the construction of new coal and gas power plants, says an information paper by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko Institut), writes Gerald Traufetter in German weekly Der ...
Germany’s coal exit will be a major energy and climate policy topic in the coalition talks and the next government should work towards a coal consensus – similar to the one found on the exit from nuclear power, Jürgen Flauger writes in an opinion piece in ...
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 ...
The North Sea will be a key location for enabling the energy transition of riparian countries such as Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, a new report by the World Energy Council says. “We see a clear opportunity for the North Sea to become a key energy ...
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 ...
Digital meter readers are gradually becoming mandatory in German households but many residents are unsure how they benefit from the technology, or how safely it treats their power consumption data, Dagmar Fischbach writes for Rheinische Post. “Smart ...
Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche likes to dress up “like the guy from next door”. He has changed his outfit from business attire to sneakers and washed-out jeans in recent years, but even with this makeover “he remains the highly paid head of a listed ...
Germany’s aspiring Jamaica coalition parties still disagree on a range of key policy fields one day before exploratory talks for a new government are scheduled to end, Gregor Waschinski writes for news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). “There’s a ...
15 Sep 2017, 00:00 German voters head to the polls on 24 September to decide the make-up of the federal parliament. The next step, however – forming a government – could take weeks, if not months. Germany’s party landscape has become more fragmented, ...
Germany’s federal government and the country’s municipalities want to use the so-called diesel summit to set up a programme worth over one billion euros to improve air quality in German cities and prevent looming driving bans for polluting cars, Zeit ...
For the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), a combustion engine ban is a no-go in coalition talks after the September elections, CSU head Horst Seehofer said in an interview with Funke Mediengruppe. It would “strike at the roots of our prosperity,” ...
CO 2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion increased by 1.8 percent in 2017 in the European Union, while Germany recorded a slight drop of 0.2 percent. According to Eurostat, Finland and Denmark registered the largest emission reductions, while Malta and ...
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 problems blocking the formation of a new government in Germany have put the brakes on one of the most ambitious energy transition projects in the country’s north, the news agency dpa reports in an article carried by the Hamburger Abendblatt. The ...
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 ...
A 2030 end date for the internal combustion engine is technically not feasible, and such a ban would be the wrong approach to decarbonising transport by 2050, said independent transportation expert and ICCT member Axel Friedrich in an interview with ...
The expansion of Germany’s offshore wind power capacity is progressing “according to plan,” but industry representatives still urge the government to do away with caps and significantly ramp up goals for capacity growth. According to the German Wind ...
Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Patricia Espinosa sees a more active role for China and the EU in climate diplomacy and technological development in the renewables sector after US President Donald ...
The next government must put much more emphasis on energy efficiency measures if climate targets are to be reached, according to the German Industry Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF). In an open letter addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ...
Several communities, local governments and regional parliaments in the small German state of Saarland oppose plans by hard coal mining foundation RAG-Stiftung to progressively reduce pumping mine water and let groundwater levels rise, Bernd Freytag ...
On 31 December, Germany will close the Gundremmingen B nuclear reactor in Bavaria, leaving the country with seven reactors to be shut down by the scheduled end-2022 nuclear exit, writes Craig Morris in an article for Energytransition.org. Morris retraces ...
Additional charges on electricity levied by the state are one of the greatest concerns of Germany’s industrial companies, Daniel Wetzel writes in Die Welt. According to a survey conducted by the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the TV debate with her challenger Martin Schulz, scolded Germany’s carmakers for putting the country’s key industry in jeopardy with their manipulation of exhaust emission values, Carsten Knop writes in a commentary for ...
Daimler is under pressure from German transport minister Andreas Scheuer to complete the recall and upgrade of 774,000 diesel vehicles that the government has found to have illegal emissions test defeat devices, Markus Fasse, Franz Hubik and Thomas Tuma ...
A quick phase-out of coal-fired power production would pose a threat to Germany’s economy, the head of the pro-business party FDP, Christian Lindner, has said in an interview with national broadcaster ZDF, Montel News writes in an article. Closing coal ...
Parliamentary elections held Sunday resulted in a major setback for Germany’s two largest parties, the conservative union of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU as well as the Social Democrats (SPD), German media say after both parties suffered heavy ...
German energy company EnBW increased its operating result (adjusted EBITDA) by 6.4 percent to 1.14 billion euros in the first half of 2018, compared to the same period last year, the company said in a press release. Net profit attributable to the ...
“Germany’s new electoral landscape promises upheaval for companies as well as politicians,” Olaf Storbeck writes in a commentary for Reuters Breakingviews. A possible new “Jamaica” coalition government including the conservative Merkel’s conservative CDU ...
A large increase of wind power generation pushed Germany’s renewable share of total power use to a record 36.1 percent last year, an increase of 3.8 percentage points over 2016, according to energy think-tank Agora Energiewende*. A rising number of ...
Operating wind turbines in Germany will only be profitable for a small fraction of the installations once their 20-year support period via the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) has ended, consultancy Energy Brainpool says in a white paper. The first turbines in ...
Germany is the world's number one market for investing in smart energy, a new industry survey by law firm Pinsent Masons finds. “The opportunities for deploying energy infrastructure in greenfield sites, the level of existing technological innovation ...
Writing for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jasper von Altenbockum says the prospective government has made unexpectedly short work of climate protection policy. Where the CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens haggled over fossil fuels for weeks, the conservatives and ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected a proposal by social democratic (SPD) frontrunner Martin Schulz to introduce a mandatory European quota for electric cars, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. “What are we going to do if the quota is not ...
Germany spent a record 26.3 billion euros on supporting renewable energy development in 2017, reports Andreas Mihm in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing data released by the country’s four power transmission grid operators (TSO) on Renewable ...
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 ...
01 Nov 2017, 00:00 Chancellor Angela Merkel could use her appearance at the COP to advance coalition talks on climate, says Ann-Kathrin Schneider, specialist for international climate policy at Friends of the Earth Germany. Meanwhile, Germany’s NGOs want ...
The shift to e-mobility means it is now easier than ever before to build a car, as prominent suppliers like Bosch or Schaeffler offer many of the necessary components, reports Christian Frahm for Spiegel Online. New startups “no longer need a budget worth ...
NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) has applied to fine the Bavarian government for ignoring a 2017 verdict from the state’s highest administrative court to impose driving bans to improve air quality. The Bavarian government insists that driving bans ...
An end to coal-fired power generation in Germany by 2030 is impossible, according to Armin Laschet, the state premier of coal mining state North Rhine-Westphalia, and a member of Angela Merkel’s Conservatives (CDU). Wind and solar power will not be able ...
The German Greens have signalled their readiness to make concessions on core policy demands in the field of climate protection for the sake of advancing the stagnant coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the pro ...
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 ...
European budget commissioner and member of Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party Günther Oettinger says new EU car emission limits must not be so strict they harm the industry. “Some politicians are simply too naïve on this and think that the car ...
More electricity was generated in Europe from wind, sun and biomass in 2017 than from lignite and hard coal, think tanks Agora Energiewende* and Sandbag say in their annual evaluation of the European energy transition. However, renewable energy sources ...
Transmission grid operator (TSO) TenneT will raise grid fees by 9 percent at the turn of the year, executive board member Urban Keussen told Klaus Stratmann for the Handelsblatt. The rise is due to costs from measures to stabilise the power grid, such as ...
Many industry observers in Germany warn that a mandatory e-car quota equals a “ planned economy ” and violates free market rules, “but it seems that the free market economy does not know where to go from here either”, Thomas Fricke writes in a column for ...
In his final speech in the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament in Kiel on Thursday, Robert Habeck, former state environment minister and current Green Party co-chair, praised the positive economic impact of Germany’s energy transition. “It is a ...
Germany can reach its target of increasing the share of renewable energy to 65 percent of power consumption by 2030 from the current 36 percent at moderate costs, according to energy think tank Agora Energiewende*. Agora proposes a series of measures to ...
The city of Berlin has decided to exit coal power generation by 2030 to protect the climate. The state coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), the Left Party, and the Greens has passed a corresponding law, according to a news report by press agency dpa ...
Germany will choose where to build its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal by the end of 2018 as a gesture to the United States, which wants to ship more gas to Europe, economy minister Peter Altmaier said after a meeting with Maros Sefcovic, the ...
It is “surprising” that major German banks did so little to finance renewable energy internationally while the country was a driver of the global energy transition, Dirk Messner, Director of the German Development Institute (DIE) told Christian Schaudwet ...
The share of diesel cars in total new passenger car registrations in Germany fell to 38.8 percent in 2017, (from 45.9 percent in 2016), the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) says in a press release. The share of petrol cars increased to 57.7 percent ...
16 Oct 2017, 00:00 The average price of new solar power installations in Germany has fallen below five cents per kilowatt hour for the first time ever. Since the introduction of auctions in 2015, prices for the technology have declined by more than 40 ...
Germany is constantly worried that it might lose its image of climate protection pioneer, which appears to be a legitimate fear due to its stalling performance in CO 2 emissions reduction and sluggish renewable energy expansion, Axel Bojanowski writes in ...
Germany’s recently-formed coal-exit commission must take into account the jobs of those employed in the coal sector, said Michael Vassiliadis, president of the mining, chemical, and energy industry union IC BGE, in an interview with Tagesspiegel ...
European auto industry executives meeting at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt face a threat to jobs and profits from pledges by governments – including China’s – to ban the combustion engine, Reuters reports. Plans for e-cars from Daimler, ...
No matter which parties will eventually form a coalition, Germany’s next government will continue with an agenda of ecological modernisation, writes Arne Jungjohann, energy analyst and a consultant for the German Green Party, in a guest commentary on ...
There’s a big discrepancy between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s call for other countries to decarbonise their economies and the grand coalition’s climate policy at home, Michael Bauchmüller writes in an opinion piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung. Merkel was able ...
Since the energy transition fundamentally changes the German energy industry, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) will introduce a new advanced training regulation for “certified energy industry business administrators”, ...
Germany’s last lignite-fired power plant will go off-line by 2040, the Social Democratic energy politician Bernd Westphal said at an event of innogy, the renewables spin-off of utility RWE, which owns many of the country’s lignite plants. But the move ...
A new Jamaica coalition government of CDU, CSU, FDP and the Greens could “improve the energy transition”, Andreas Kuhlmann, head of the German Energy Agency (dena), told Die Welt in an interview. Kuhlmann said the different demands brought forward by the ...
Each and every party involved in Germany’s ‘Jamaica coalition’ talks to form a new federal government should have an interest in securing “a quick and orderly coal exit”, as the alternatives “are way too risky”, Anna Pegels and Jonas Keil from the German ...
A commitment to green public procurement could lower Germany’s carbon footprint and contribute to achieving the country’s 2020 climate targets, according to a paper by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). “Given the large volumes of ...
More and more electricity around the world will be generated with wind power turbines but Germany’s large manufacturers continue to lay off workers at home and abroad, Dow Jones Newswires reports. Senvion, Nordex, Enercon, and Siemens-Gamesa are among the ...
The Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, is currently in a transition phase that is likely to take some time and which will delay the appointment of the parliamentary committees for climate and energy, Jakob Schlandt writes for the Tagesspiegel Background ...
The EU’s plan to introduce stringent energy consumption targets could be counterproductive if the aim is to effectively and cost-efficiently decarbonise Europe’s economy, says a new study conducted by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW). On ...
Germany’s levy to support renewables expansion, the EEG surcharge, will decrease to around 6.74 euro cents per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh) in 2018, from this year’s 6.88 ct/kWh, according to calculations by think tank Agora Energiewende.* A predicted rise in ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel signalling support for an eventual combustion engine ban is putting the onus solely on the car industry, writes Horst Teltschik, former board member at carmaker BMW and former foreign policy advisor of the German government ...
The government’s goal of increasing the share of renewables in Germany’s power mix from 50 percent to 65 percent by 2030 could substantially delay the point at which solar and wind power installations can become fully competitive, the consultancy Aurora ...
14 Nov 2017, 00:00 Technical negotiations at COP23 in Bonn are approaching the final stage; it's important that they will be open to amendments throughout 2018, says German negotiator / Ministers arriving in Bonn will focus on finance, loss and ...
The parameters for efficiency rules suggested by the industry and energy committee in the European Parliament are too rigid, says German industry association BDI. Industry needed a flexible legal framework that helps to combine energy efficiency and ...
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 ...
The turnover of enterprises with 20 or more persons employed in the energy, water, and waste management industries amounted to 510.1 billion euros in 2016, a decrease of 9.8 percent compared with 2015, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said in a ...
Ending diesel tax benefits in the EU would significantly help decrease CO₂ and nitrogen oxide emissions in road transport, because diesel vehicle users are very price sensitive, the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) ...
The auto sector will remain one of the steel industry's biggest customers, because the switch to e-mobility demands large quantities of steel for component parts, charging stations, power grids and power stations, Helmut Bünder writes for Frankfurter ...
A new drill developed by the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg in Saxony that crushes rocks with lightning flashes could lead to substantial cost cuts in geothermal energy generation, Focus Online reports. After ten years of testing, researchers ...
Most Germans are satisfied with the goals of the Energiewende and the measures taken to achieve them- but say that cost distribution is among the project’s greatest shortcomings, two different studies by the University of Kassel have found. People ...
German luxury car brand Porsche has halted sales of custom-made new cars as it struggles to comply with new emissions regulations for petrol engines, Holger Appel writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The new WLTP emissions norm introduced by the ...
“Considerable legal concerns” could stand in the way of German farmers’ demand for recurring compensation payments if power lines are built on their land, according to a law firm report commissioned by energy industry association the German Association of ...
A 300-kilometre power cable under the Baltic Sea will transport excess German wind power to Swedish hydropower plants, according to plans by German grid operator 50Hertz and Swedish company Svenska kraftnät, Andre Wornowski reports for regional newspaper ...
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 ...
A fire under a moorland, caused accidentally during a military exercise in northern Germany, has released at least over half a million tonnes of CO 2, the NGO Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) says in a press release. The smouldering fire ...
The approach to phasing out coal-fired power production in Germany has become a bone of contention between the prospective coalition partners, the conservative CDU and the environmentalist Green Party, as remarks made by both parties’ energy politicians ...
In an opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Martin Gropp argues that the Green Party's proposal for a ban on the combustion engine is heavy handed, and relying on incentives and carmakers' ingenuity would be more fruitful. “A ban on ...
German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) head Stefan Kapferer warns that calls from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) for recurring compensation payments to farmers if power transmission lines are built on their premises would make ...
Construction of the direct current connection NordLink for the exchange of renewable energy between Germany and Norway has started, writes transmission grid operator (TSO) TenneT in a press release. “For the first time, the interconnector will directly ...
Germany’s energy transition not only misses 2020 climate targets but fails on many other accounts too, according to the head of an expert commission tasked with monitoring the Energiewende’s progress. “Efficiency is a particular problem,” economist ...
The largely state-owned German energy company EnBW says it has achieved “a financial turnaround” in 2017, posting a profit of 2.1 billion euros in the fiscal year. At EnBW’s general meeting, CEO Frank Mastiaux said the turnaround was “a key milestone in ...
The large brown coal-fired power stations in Lusatia should not be shut down but used as flexible providers for an affordable power supply, Jan Selmons quoted Professor Hans Joachim Krautz, chair of power plant technology at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, as ...
Two citizen action groups have collected almost 50,000 signatures on a petition calling for amendments to the rules on wind turbine construction in Germany’s northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The signatories want the rules ...
Many banks and large investors – even those who have publicly committed themselves to divest from CO 2 intensive businesses and are members of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) – are still supporting new coal plants around the ...
The increase in public transport passengers in Germany shows the potential for further growth of the system, which in turn could make it “problem solver #1” in reducing transport sector emissions in cities and metropolitan areas, said Jürgen Fenske, ...
The hidden costs of conventional energy sources in Germany amount to 38 billion euros, compared to the 24.5 billion euros worth of EEG surcharge, which is paid directly by consumers with their power bill to support renewable energy generation. Researchers ...
It is unclear whether the Russian-German gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 will retain political backing following the German federal election, Anna Sauerbrey writes for Tagesspiegel. The Social Democrats supported the project and it would "likely ...
Despite German Chancellor Angela Merkel “unexpectedly” signalling support for an eventual ban of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, it is unlikely she will actually push for an early phase-out, writes Zachary Shahan in an opinion piece for ...
Ahead of the government coalition talks, industry representatives have voiced concern over recent proposals on CO₂ pricing by German experts or French President Emmanuel Macron, writes Andreas Mihm in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The German industry ...
German NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) says a court ruling in Stuttgart on banning certain diesel models from entering the inner city showed the bans were “justified” and “unavoidable”. The group that originally filed the lawsuit said the ruling ...
18 Sep 2017, 00:00 Protecting the climate has become so commonplace among Germany's political parties that it is hard for one of them to stand out on an environmentalist platform, says Torsten Schneider-Haase of German opinion polling company Kantar ...
The German Postal Service’s e-car manufacturing branch Streetscooter could soon be listed on the stock market, news agency Reuters reports. “It’s theoretically possible. We’re looking at the next two to three years,” the Postal Service’s board member ...
Drivers of diesel cars have apparently ignored the first diesel driving bans in Germany that took effect on 31 May on two busy roads in the city of Hamburg, website bild.de reports. “Commuter traffic flows as usual”, the article says, adding that police ...
The southern German medieval city of Heidelberg has announced the country’s most aggressive plans to clean up its air, reports Elisabeth Behrmann for Bloomberg. The university and industrial town of some 150,000 inhabitants will buy only exhaust-free ...
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 ...
No other state in Germany makes greater use of geothermal energy than the eastern state of Brandenburg, the Märkische Allgemeine reports. The coal mining state that surrounds the German capital of Berlin has the largest installed capacity of heat pumps, ...
New power lines are needed urgently to incorporate an increasing amount of renewable electricity in the power grid, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the 20-year anniversary of the Federal Network Agency. “It’s obviously also a question of the ...
European carmakers announced last year they would invest 21.7 billion euros in China to manufacture electric vehicles (EV), compared to only 3.2 billion euros in Europe, according to clean mobility lobby group Transport&Environment (T&E). “China ...
In a bid to avoid EU fines for excessive air pollution, the German government is considering plans to make public transport free of charge to improve air quality in cities. Transport experts welcomed the proposed measures designed to lure more people onto ...
In recent years, German politicians endorsed a “fake climate goal” that could not have been met, renowned German environmentalist Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker said in an interview with the Main Post. Von Weizsäcker said “it is good” the parties in ...
The northern German city of Hamburg has begun to enforce the diesel driving ban it introduced as the country’s first city last week, the public broadcaster NDR reports. The ban that affects short stretches of two major roads in the port city and include ...
Germany’s federal government plans to present a joint list of demands to German carmakers at the national diesel summit on 2 August, a spokesperson for the environment ministry (BMUB) told journalists in Berlin on Monday. The inviting transport and ...
Unveiling its Climate Strategy 2.0, the German Farmers’ Association (DBV) said climate change posed an enormous challenge for German farmers. “Like no other economic sector, agriculture and forestry are directly affected, as extreme weather events in the ...
If the allegations over a cartel formed by Germany’s five largest carmakers “are just to the slightest extent true, it’s the end of the car industry as we know it”, Markus Fasse writes in a commentary for Handelsblatt Online. Billions in fines, civil ...
Utility EnBW says it has achieved a “financial turnaround” by "increasing its operating result for the first time since 2010". CEO Frank Mastiaux called the 2017 result a “milestone in our company’s transformation.” Read the press release in ...
Industrial conglomerate Siemens has formed a partnership with plane maker Airbus and turbine engine supplier Rolls Royce to test a hybrid-electric propulsion system for commercial aircraft. The “E-Fan X” technology demonstrator, which is based on an ...
The German government will have to decide in the coming days who will participate in the country’s coal exit commission because Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet is due to approve the composition on 16 May, report Silke Kersting and Klaus Stratmann in ...
Germany’s energy industry can reach its greenhouse gas reduction obligations for 2030 and 2050 purely by letting the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) do its work, Michael Vassiliadis, head of the mining and chemicals industry union IG BCE, said ...
A typical electric car today produces just half of the greenhouse gas emissions of an average European passenger car over its life cycle of manufacturing, fuel cycle and use, writes the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) in a review ...
Germany imported 10.2 percent more oil products between January and September 2017 than in the same period last year, the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (Bafa) says in a press release. Oil product imports stood at 32.3 million ...
The government parties in Germany’s northern state of Schleswig-Holstein are risking the further development of wind energy, opposition party SPD and wind energy association BWE say. They want to “thoroughly rework” the plan instead of verifying the ...
Over 60 companies have criticised government plans to substantially limit the possibilities for wind power expansion in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Hilmar Riemenschneider writes for Kölner Stadtanzeiger. In a letter to ...
Four-way exploratory talks ahead of negotiations for a government coalition of CDU, CSU, FDP and Greens (known as a 'Jamaica' coalition, due to party colours) are likely to start only after the state parliamentary election in Lower Saxony on 15 ...
The Greens’ Kerstin Andreae and FDP’s Otto Fricke, both members of the Bundestag, debated the parties’ policy differences and potential stumbling blocks for coalition talks in a joint interview in WirtschaftsWoche. Asked if the Greens’ proposal to ...
Germany’s new environment minister, Svenja Schulze, says Germany must regain its leadership position in the international effort to reduce carbon emissions. “Germany quickly has to restore its pioneering role in climate action,” Schulze said during her ...
Geothermal energy is hailed by many as a great hope for the energy transition, but despite its seemingly endless potential for clean heat, the technology has barely got off the ground in Germany, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by ...
Reducing global emissions from transport sector is key to limiting climate change, and G20 countries are responsible for the lion’s share, according to a study by the German government's international development agency (GIZ) and transport think tank ...
The German car industry continues to lobby hard to soften EU emission limits, but its foot-dragging in the shift to electric mobility has alienated EU policymakers, writes Silke Wettach in the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. The carmakers want to ...
The buyer’s bonus German carmakers will offer for customers switching away from an old diesel will have little effect, writes Lukas Bay in an article in Handelsblatt. The 2,000-euro bonus incentive wasn’t big enough, said Stefan Bratzel, of the Center of ...
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 ...
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 ...
German renewable energy company innogy’s supervisory board has appointed Uwe Tigges as the new CEO, the company says in a press release. Uwe Tigges had initially been appointed as interim CEO of innogy following Peter Terium’s resignation from the ...
The federal government has published its National Reform Programme 2018, a report to be sent to the European Commission, in which Germany explains its policy reform plans. The section on energy and climate largely contains the provisions that Angela ...
German economic liberal party FDP is increasingly wooing adversaries of the energy transition and climate policy sceptics in its bid to reenter parliament, write Anna-Sophia Lang and Gerald Traufetter in Der Spiegel. The FDP fell short of the required ...
Germany’s new and old coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) have “made a shambles of the successful pro-climate and pro-renewables policy of the SPD-Greens coalition” in the early 2000s, Green politician Hans ...
Germany will not be able to reach its EU target of an 18-percent renewables share in final energy consumption by 2020 under the current conditions, writes the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) in its forecast for renewables development by 2020. ...
Germany is paying a high price for creating jobs in the renewables sector and it is uncertain whether these jobs are sustainable in the long run, Manuel Frondel writes in a guest article for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The econometrist from economic ...
Germany’s energy transition is a project that “commands respect” from its European neighbours but the country also depends on a strong Europe to pursue the Energiewende and embark on other economic endeavours, former EU Commission Vice-President Viviane ...
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 ...
Blogger and author Craig Morris is leaving the "Energy Transition: The Global Energiewende" blog to work for the Renewables Grid Initiative *. Morris has been the Energy Transition blog’s main blogger and the lead author of its annually updated ...
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 ...
The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is likely to have already met its 2020 emissions reduction target of 25 percent compared to 1990 levels, the state’s environment agency (LANUV) says in a press release. Almost one third of Germany’s ...
With its reaction to reports on Germany missing its own 2020 emissions reduction goals, Germany’s environment ministry (BMUB) has given a prime example of political opportunism, Thorsten Knuf writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Rundschau. In early ...
The “big four” utilities in Germany- RWE, E.ON, Vattenfall Germany, and EnBW- have all disappeared from a list of the country’s 100 largest companies compiled by the German Monopolies Commission, the competition watchdog says in its annual report. The ...
The EU needs much higher 2030 renewable energy and energy efficiency targets than are currently on the table, Radostina Primova and Rebecca Bertram from Green political foundation Heinrich Böll-Stiftung said in an interview with EURACTIV. In negotiations ...
The former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and a group of scientists including Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) set out a six-point plan for ...
Martin Schulz, the Social Democrats’ (SPD) frontrunner for Germany’s 2017 federal elections, has suggested that the country’s carmakers should not fear a major attack on their diesel technology if he is elected Chancellor in September, Markus Mayr reports ...
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 ...
Germany produced more solar power than ever before in the first four months of a year in 2018, boosting power generation by 25 percent compared to 2016, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Handelsblatt. By the end of a particularly sunny ...
There is a consensus in Germany to gradually shift the energy supply to renewable sources and to reduce primary energy consumption- but the central question of energy storage is often bypassed, says Nicolaus Römer, head of hydro power company ...
Germany’s carmakers will have to step up their efforts to avoid driving bans in inner cities due to high NO x emissions, the German government says in a press release. Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting with representatives of several affected German ...
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 coming weeks will see intensified opposition and protest against lignite mining in the western German Rhenish mining district, writes Christoph Parth in a long feature for Zeit Online. A number of protest events are scheduled, and the police also ...
Germany’s foreign minister and former SPD head Sigmar Gabriel says his party should focus less on environmental and climate protection and instead emphasise topics that concern its traditional voting bloc, such as industrial job security and upholding ...
Germany’s automobile industry has had a lot of “ false friends ” in the government in recent years, Green Party politician and head of the parliamentary commission on transport and digitalisation Cem Özdemir told Ansgar Graw at Die Welt in an interview. ...
Swedish Utility Vattenfall has made “one of the single biggest investments in renewables ” in its history by ordering 113 modern 8 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbines from Spanish-German manufacturer Siemens-Gamesa, Vattenfall says in a press release. ...
The prospect of a new government coalition in Germany that would include the Green Party resulted in a drop in utility RWE’s share price of more than five percent on Monday, making the energy company that operates many coal-fired power plants the biggest ...
German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp’s CEO Heinrich Hiesinger said that a strict combustion engine ban could cost the auto industry a lot of money because of the long-term planning of affected companies, writes Carsten Dierig for Welt Online. “The immediate ...
Car giant Volkswagen has been fined one billion euros by German prosecutors over diesel emissions cheating, reports the BBC. The carmaker said it did not plan to appeal the fine, which is one of the highest ever imposed by German authorities on a company, ...
Renewable energies place a greater burden on power grids than previously thought, according to an article by scientists from the Jacobs University Bremen published in the “Scientific Reports” journal. Even the slightest fluctuations can be measured over ...
Diesel fuel was invented by a German engineer and is pushed relentlessly by the country’s carmakers to this day, which is why banning it “has the feel of a ban on beer or bratwurst,” writes Griff Witte in a feature article for the Washington Post. “Yet ...
Closely monitored regulations on the car industry should be implemented on an EU level, as this is “apparently difficult” within Germany, Martin Unfried writes in an opinion piece for tageszeitung (taz). Unfried says the German government is too cosy with ...
German port industries and state politicians call for removing the cap on offshore wind power expansion, Jan Peter Naumann writes in DVZ – Deutsche Logistik-Zeitung. The current expansion corridor of 15 gigawatt (GW) by 2030 had to be expanded to 30GW by ...
Germany’s government has fallen behind in the transformation of the energy industry triggered by the energy transition, and must now speed up its policy making processes to support the sector in reaching emissions reduction goals, the managing director of ...
The leaders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) have agreed to enter into talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU / CSU alliance, the SPD 's executive committee says in a draft resolution seen by the 91tv. The ...
Germany’s current cheapest electric car, the e.GO Life, comes from the small, new manufacturer e.GO Mobile and has the potential to become a bestseller, Focus Online reports. “We aim for a production of 20,000 cars by 2019,” says CEO Günter Schuh, who is ...
Germany’s transport minister Andreas Scheuer quizzed Daimler chief executive Dieter Zetsche over the extend of possible emissions-cheating software in the company’s models, write Franz Hubik and Brian Hanrahan in Handelsblatt Global. The talks came after ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to “examine all other options” before making a final decision on hardware retrofitting for diesel cars, she said in an interview with tageszeitung (taz). “If I put another 1,000 to 2,000 euros per car into old ...
A ban on registering new combustion engine passenger cars from 2030 would directly or indirectly affect around 620,000 jobs in Germany – or 10 percent of the country’s industrial workforce, according to a study by Institute for Economic Research (ifo) for ...
The upcoming UN climate conference (COP23) in Bonn will be an important milestone on the way to creating a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, Germany’s chief UNFCCC negotiator Karsten Sach said at a briefing in Berlin. “If ...
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 Mediterranean island of Mallorca could serve as a gateway for Germans and other tourists to get first-hand experience with electric cars, according to a study by the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences. Mallorca, the most popular holiday island ...
The EUREF-Campus in the German capital Berlin has become a showcase for efficient energy use, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The campus combines existing technologies with a software that analyses weather data and regulates the use of ...
There are still many technical, political and financial hurdles on the path to fully electric road transport, and its final development is much less clear, writes Handelsblatt. Handelsblatt lists “seven inconvenient truths,” such as “e-cars are only as ...
The significant drop in the cost of generating offshore wind power means that even modern nuclear power plants are no longer able to compete economically with this renewable energy source, says German energy supplier innogy SE’s COO for Renewables Hans ...
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 ...
Diverting part of European gas supply from Russia around Ukraine via the Nord Stream 2 offshore Baltic Sea pipeline would empower Moscow to “attack our common values” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko writes in a guest article in the Frankfurter ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel might enjoy global respect as “leader of the free world” but her current standing also warranted “a more nuanced assessment” of what her country “has done and can do”, Michael Bröning writes in an opinion piece for Politico ...
The German Association of Local Utilities (VKU) and the Renewable Energies Agency (AEE) have called for an increased focus on energy transition in heating to enable Germany to reach its emissions reduction targets. “Unlike in the power market, the share ...
German prosecutors have made the first arrest at carmaker Audi over the emissions fraud scandal, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. The former engine developer who worked at Audi until a few months ago allegedly helped develop the emissions manipulation ...
The energy ministers of Germany’s 16 federal states have agreed to strengthen their focus on the separation of key energy policy decisions from party politics, and to improve coordination between the individual state ministries, the Environment and Energy ...
It will be easier for CDU, CSU, FDP and the Green Party to find an agreement on migration and asylum than on climate policy, the CDU’s Armin Laschet, state premier of Germany’s industrial heartland North Rhine-Westphalia, told Rheinische Post in an ...
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 ...
It will still take some years before the investors in the world’s largest chemical company, Germany’s BASF, can expect profits from a deal concluded with Russian Gazprom in 2015, writes Bernd Freytag in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In an asset swap, ...
The federal environment ministry does not share the “extremely negative” assessment by think tank Agora Energiewende * that Germany is heading for a “spectacular” miss of the 2020 climate targets, writes Susanne Ehlerding in the Tagesspiegel. “We continue ...
After almost five weeks of deliberations, the pro-business Free Democratic Party has pulled the plug on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to form a coalition government made up of her conservative CDU/CSU alliance, the Greens and the FDP. Migration was ...
German solar battery maker Sonnen has secured 60 million euros in funds from Shell Ventures, a unit of the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell, and existing shareholders to expand at home and abroad, reports Vera Eckert for Reuters newswire. Sonnen chief ...
The German government is working at the EU level to ensure testing methods that measure the real driving emissions of motor vehicles are also developed for CO2, according to a press release from the German parliament. Replying to an enquiry by the Left ...
The diesel summit agreement from 2 August to upgrade software in five million vehicles, set up a mobility fund, and offer buyer’s bonuses can be described as “Mickey Mouse policies” that may cut harmful emissions by five percent at best, Jens Thurau ...
It is incomprehensible that the Left Party in the Brandenburg state government does not defend existing ambitious emission reduction targets against its coalition partner SPD, writes Eva Bulling-Schröter, spokesperson for energy and climate policy for the ...
Germany is a world leader on energy efficiency, according to IEA executive director Fatih Birol. Speaking at the presentation of the IEA’s Energy Efficiency report 2017 in Berlin, Birol said that “every German citizen had 580 dollars more to spend on ...
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel’s assessment of why his Social Democratic party suffered so many losses in recent elections is “hypocritical”, Jörg Staude says in a commentary for klimaretter.info. Gabriel said his party had neglected its voters’ core ...
German energy minister Peter Altmaier has rejected calls from a group of EU countries to increase the share of renewables to between 33 and 35 percent of the bloc’s energy mix by 2030, Frédéric Simon writes in EURACTIV. Speaking at an 11 June Energy ...
Johannes Teyssen, the chief executive of energy company E.ON, said Germany is running the risk of losing the overarching plot of its Energiewende. He warned that the current government is focusing again too much on side-aspects such as the exact date and ...
The electric car will eventually take over as the dominant type of vehicle in Germany and this shift is going to cost the country jobs but clinging to the combustion engine would nonetheless be a big mistake, Christian Hochfeld, head of transportation ...
Germany can save nearly 28 billion euros a year if it stops mining and using lignite, a study by Green Budget Germany (FÖS) commissioned by green power provider Greenpeace Energy has found. Apart from the costs of energy generation with lignite, which is ...
Germany will not be able to phase out coal-fired power production by 2030, said Rolf Martin Schmitz, head of RWE, the country’s biggest power producer and Europe’s biggest private emitter of CO 2. In an interview with the Rheinische Post on the eve of the ...
The diesel emissions scandal and the push for e-mobility will allow German automotive industry supplier Continental to “grow stronger than the market” in the long-term, Member of the Executive Board Wolfgang Schäfer told Handelsblatt in an interview. ...
US President Donald Trump has lambasted the German reliance on Russian energy resources, saying the country is “totally controlled by” and “captive of” the fossil fuel exporting giant, according to international media reports. “Germany is totally ...
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 ...
In the weeks before the EU Commission is set to announce new car CO₂ limits on 8 November, the German car industry lobby has increased the pressure on the institution, report Markus Balser and Alexander Mühlauer in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The head of the ...
German energy utility RWE might be considering a partial takeover of its rival Uniper, Jürgen Flauger reports for the Handelsblatt. RWE refused to comment but Flauger points out it has previously been interested in buying gas and coal-fired power plants. ...
Almost half the German population believes the federal election in September has already been decided, Renate Köcher of polling agency Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Survey results show 71 percent of Germans ...
Germany’s new transport minister, Andreas Scheuer, has criticised European air quality measuring standards. In an interview with the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Scheuer said that while EU agreements “ must of course be abided by,” the methods used to ...
Diesel technology can in theory help protect the climate, but the average diesel car in Germany hardly emits less CO₂ than the average petrol car, Federal Environment Agency (UBA) president Maria Krautzberger told Süddeutsche Zeitung. Efficiency gains ...
Workforce representatives of Germany’s car industry fear “massive job losses” due to the transition from the combustion engine to electric drives, write Nikolaus Doll and Philipp Vetter in Die Welt. In a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, works ...
A dispute between the two south-eastern European states Serbia and Kosovo is said to be responsible for a voltage drop in the European power grid, which has caused many electronic clocks on the continent to run slow, Norbert Lossau writes in Die Welt. ...
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party wants to stop the German Energiewende, and at the same time promotes nature conservation, Susanne Götze writes for Süddeutsche Zeitung. She says this contradiction is “a systematic one that has tradition ...
German container shipping firm Hapag-Lloyd plans to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 2016 levels. Its aim is to help support a drive to halve emissions in the global shipping industry, reports Reuters. “We have deliberately set ...
The outgoing grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD made the mistake of not putting a general cap on coal-fired power production when it mothballed several old an inefficient lignite plants in 2016 in order to save CO₂ emissions, Jochen Flasbarth, Social ...
Despite public denials, the European Commission is considering implementing an e-car quota to be achieved by automakers by 2030, writes Arthur Nelson for Climate Home. “It is looking increasingly likely that [the Commission] will come forward with a ...
In a commentary in the online magazine, Erneuerbare Energien, Nicole Weinhold writes that despite the best quarter ever for German wind power producers, expansion in the coming years is likely to be curbed. Projects that were successful in Germany's ...
The chemical industry has had “a good year without limitations” in 2017 but says that further increases in energy prices continue to pose a risk for Germany’s third largest industry branch, the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) says in a press ...
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 ...
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 ...
“Climate change and the challenge of defending multilateralism in an era of Trumpian protectionism has finally given Germany a global leadership role,” writes Jennifer Tollmann in a blog article for E3G. US president Donald Trump’s rejection of the ...
The energy consumption level of buildings in Germany was stagnant between 2010 and 2016, a report prepared by the German Energy Agency (dena) reveals. The trend of improving energy efficiency, which saw energy consumption drop by 20 percent between 2002 ...
Germany should not ponder diesel bans, e-car quotas, and other interventionist policies to achieve the transformation of its transport sector. Instead, it should consider how car traffic volumes can be reduced altogether, Martin Kesternich and Martin ...
The Bavarian state government is a powerful supporter of German farmers’ demand to receive recurring compensation payments if power transmission lines are built on their premises, writes Andreas Mihm in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The governing ...
Diesel cars should lose their privileged tax treatment in Germany to release funds for the development of more environmentally friendly engine technologies, VW CEO Matthias Müller said in an interview with Handelsblatt. Müller said investing in other ...
German energy company and E.ON’s fossil carve-out Uniper raised its earnings outlook for 2017 to an adjusted EBIT of 1-1.2 billion euros, after a “very solid performance” in the first half of the year, Uniper writes in a press release. Christoph Steitz ...
Ninety-five percent of Germans say that increased use and expansion of renewable energy is important or very important, according to a representative survey by Kantar Emnid, commissioned by Renewable Energies Agency (AEE). It also found broad support (65 ...
The net output of renewable energy sources in Germany’s power mix has reached a new record share in the first half of 2018, the website Energy Charts run by research institute Fraunhofer ISE says. With a net generation of 113 terawatt hours (TWh) between ...
German utility innogy has lost about a quarter million customers over the last year, and its earnings slightly declined to about 1.2 billion euros in the first quarter of 2018 as the asset swap deal between utilities E.ON and RWE looms, the news agency ...
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung has published a long article on electricity and heating prosumers (producers and consumers), written by Anna Steiner. There are currently about 1.6 million prosumers in Germany, among them households with solar ...
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 ...
Due to the sluggish advance of its energy transition in the heating and transport sectors, Germany is set to miss the EU target of covering 18-percent of final energy consumption with renewables by 2020, lobby group the Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) ...
Environmental organisations NABU and WWF have urged Germany’s parties, currently negotiating to form a government, to stop the natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2, a joint press release by the two organisations says. In an open letter to party ...
The market share of newly registered cars fitted with diesel engines in Germany may have dropped sharply because the technology’s reputation is seriously tarnished, but diesel fuel sales rose to a record high this year, report Max Hägler and Jan ...
13 Jul 2017, 00:00 Germany should implement a national tax on carbon emissions in order to meet its own emission reduction targets in the an efficient and straight forward way, the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) proposed based on a study by ...
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 ...
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) wants to develop a national climate protection law and introduce a CO₂ floor price, the party says in a first draft for the federal election campaign programme. "We will continue to develop European emissions trading ...
Large German companies have criticised the coalition agreement between Social Democrats and the conservative CDU/CSU for being too weak on climate action, Handelsblatt reports. A survey among Germany’s 30 Dax-listed companies also shows they support a ...
Germany’s “technology-neutral” joint auctions for wind and solar power projects are the result of “a political bargaining process” instead of sound economic strategy, Angelika Nikionok-Ehrlich writes for Energie & Management. “Even the Federal ...
The Energiewende, Germany’s energy transition, has so far seen too much political planning and not enough free market forces, making coal-fired power production one of the project’s “winners” besides renewable energy sources, gas lobbyist Timm Kehler ...
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has toned down its ambition regarding the introduction of a carbon floor price in its proposal for a party programme, to be decided at a federal party conference on 25 June. The party, which currently governs together ...
German policymakers could agree to a European carbon floor price of 20 euros per tonne, Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of French oil company Total, has said according to Reuters. Back in September, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested a minimum CO 2 price of ...
Ecologic criticism of the German agriculture industry plays no role in the campaign for the upcoming general elections, contrary to previous years, writes Jan Grossarth in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Priorities now lay with topics ...
Germany’s transmission network operators have raised their prices, which leads to higher grid fees payable by consumers with their power price, reports Andreas Macho for the WirtschaftsWoche. Eastern German grid operators rose fees by up to 80 percent, ...
Four German carmakers have each dismantled a Tesla Model 3 after buying them on the grey market, Stefan Hajek reports in the business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. Hajek does not name the carmakers, but hints at Daimler, BMW, Audi, and VW. The engineers ...
The University of Münster is the first German university to rule out investments in the coal, gas and oil sectors, the divestment initiative Fossil Free Münster says in a press release. “This decision makes the University of Münster a role model of ...
While environmental considerations now play a larger role, they are still not among the key influencing factors for buying a car, and “come behind aspects such as ergonomics or brand image,” writes Deutsche Bank Research in a paper. Find the paper in ...
Germany’s largest industry federation, BDI, warns that high power prices could lead to an exodus of companies to cheaper production locations abroad, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Spiegel Online. BDI head Dieter Kempf said Germany had ...
German prosecutors have expanded their investigations over diesel emissions fraud to sports car manufacturer Porsche, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The luxury brand subsidiary of Germany’s largest carmaker VW has so far not been in the focus of ...
The energy sector could achieve a 40 percent CO 2 reduction by 2020 if an extra five gigawatt (GW) of brown and hard coal-fired power stations were shut down in the next years, industry association BDEW says. The energy association finds in its analysis ...
Chinese grid operator SGCC is again trying to obtain a 20 percent share in German transmission network operator 50Hertz, Klaus Stratmann reports for the business daily Handelsblatt. In March 2018, SGCC failed to buy a 20 percent stake in 50Hertz, when ...
The election battle in Germany leaves little room for hoping that the country’s climate protection record will improve soon, Ralf Köpke writes in Energie & Management. While the wind power industry currently approaches a new expansion record and ...
Twenty-four projects with a total capacity of 28 MW have been awarded funding in the first round of tenders for biomass plants, the Federal Network Agency that organises the auctions has announced. A total of 33 bids with a combined capacity of 41 MW were ...
German politicians might appear more concerned with halting global climate change than the current US administration, but in reality they have done little in recent years to actually improve their country’s climate record, Philip Bethge writes in Der ...
The Green Party has failed to learn from past experience that insisting on controversial demands can cost the party dearly in terms of voter approval, Ludwig Greven writes in a commentary for Zeit Online. While the world is “grappling with Donald Trump,” ...
The breakdown of Germany’s ‘Jamaica coalition’ talks after the pro-business FDP dropped out after four weeks of negotiations has alarmed representatives of the country’s leading industries, Roland Pichler and Kerstin Ruchay write in the Suttgarter ...
After the TV debate between conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and her social-democratic challenger Martin Schulz in the run-up to the German election on 24 September, Merkel was largely seen as more convincing, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. In a ...
German technology company Bosch and utility EnBW have opened a new large battery storage facility that helps stabilise the power grid, Bosch says in a press release. The battery consists of 768 lithium-ion modules that can provide energy quickly and help ...
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 ...
A cross-party alliance of eastern German state premiers has warned the federal government that a quick coal exit would have grave consequences for the region’s economy, public broadcaster MDR reports on its website. In a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel ...
The energy policy plans of the new government of Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) bear the risk that the state “in the medium and long run is left behind as an energy region ”, Peter Berger writes in Kölner Stadtanzeiger. In ...
15 Sep 2017, 00:00 The scope of the next government's ambition for the Energiewende depends on the constellation of its coalition, says Arne Jungjohann, energy policy analyst and Green Party member, although the shift to a renewables-based economy is ...
Saxony’s parting State Premier, Stanislaw Tillich, has said that over six billion euros in compensation payments were necessary if Germany wanted to phase out lignite-fired power production over the next few years. According to the conservative politician ...
Onshore wind power in Germany grew by about 1,700 turbines, with a total capacity of roughly 5,300 megawatts (MW) in 2017, a gross increase of 15 percent compared to the previous year, according to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE). In a press ...
Lower Saxony, Germany’s largest wind power state and home to carmaker Volkswagen, will hold new elections on 15 October after a Greens party member defected to the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). The move had cost the current government coalition ...
Europe’s carmakers can manage the shift to offer clean, competitive and interconnected transport solutions to stay ahead in the global race, EU Commissioner Maros Sefcovic writes in an op-ed for business weekly Wirtschaftswoche. However, the ongoing ...
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 ...
The German Environment Agency (UBA) says greenhouse gas emissions from the industries (excluding aviation) that take part in the European emissions trading system (ETS) fell by 3.4 percent last year – a steeper decline than Germany achieved in its overall ...
German Green Party think tank the Heinrich Boell Foundation has published its European Energy Atlas 2018, detailing the state of Europe’s energy transition. Among the topics covered are the role renewables play in job creation, as well as the ...
Europe needs to triple its current offshore wind installation rate to keep with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5° Celsius, wrote consultancy Ecofys’s Michiel Müller in a guest article for energy post on 8 August. “Such ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the German car industry to do all that is necessary to regain the credibility and trust lost during the emissions scandal. In her opening speech at the Frankfurt car show (IAA), Merkel said carmakers had ...
An online survey by YouGov found that 82 percent of Germans support central goals of the energy transition- to phase out nuclear power and switch to a renewable energy supply in the long term. Commissioned by Federation of German Consumer Organisations ...
31 Jul 2017, 00:00 Environment minister Barbara Hendricks has been at the helm of Germany's climate protection efforts for the past four years. During her tenure, the country has contributed substantially to brokering the Paris Agreement and put ...
The German government does not consider the lower taxation of diesel fuel as a subsidy that favours use of the technology. In a response to a parliamentary inquiry by the Green Party, the government says the lower tax for diesel fuel does not amount to a ...
Leaked information ahead of the last day of exploratory talks between Germany’s prospective coalition parties suggest that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) will spare the country’s mighty carmakers ...
Environmental Action Germany (DUH) has announced it will expand its legal action over air pollution from diesel cars to several more German cities. In a press release, the environmental organisation said it would sue authorities in the cities of Kiel, ...
German utility RWE confirmed its 2017 forecast after posting a seven percent increase in earnings in the second half of 2017, and announced it would pay a special dividend of 1 euro a share after having received the nuclear fuel tax refund, writes Guy ...
Germany’s across-the-board taxes, levies and surcharges on power consumption limit flexibility and innovation in the energy sector, Fabian Reetz writes on Zeit Online. More than 80 percent of the German power price is made up of such fees imposed by the ...
E.ON’s interest in competitor RWE’s renewables spin-off innogy is also triggered by innogy’s 4,000-odd existing contracts with municipalities, which grant the latter company the right to operate local grids, or give it a stake in local utilities, writes ...
With about 78,000 new solar heaters in 2017, a total of about 2.3 million solar heating systems are now in operation in Germany, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) and the Association of Heating Industry (BDH) say in a joint press release. Find ...
Testing the effect of exhaust fumes on monkeys and even people cannot be ethically justified, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert said at a press conference on Monday. The public outcry against the tests which exposed monkeys and ...
German companies booked revenues of some 66 billion euros with products and services aimed at environmental and climate protection in 2015, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW Köln) says in a report. Metal working and electronics manufacturers ...
Despite continuing subsidies for wind power, the technology is likely to prove very beneficial for regional economies in Germany in the long run, Steffen Höhne writes in a commentary for Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. In the eastern German federal state of ...
27 Jun 2017
Germany's economy ministry (BMWi) has signed a contract with the country's nuclear plant operators that regulates the funding of nuclear waste disposal, the BMWi has said in a press release. The BMWi and the four utilities E.ON, EnBW, RWE and ...
Western German grid operator Amprion’s decision to raise power grid fees by about 45 percent in 2018 is in large part due to French supply issues this past winter, reports Andreas Macho in WirtschaftsWoche. Amprion was forced to frequently employ grid ...
German utility E.ON uses a smart grid with solar and wind energy, as well as a large battery, to supply a Swedish village exclusively with renewable electricity. “In order to support the balancing of the local energy system, customers are engaged to ...
German carmakers and suppliers are reluctant to agree to battery cell production in Europe despite the recent EU Commission initiative to build an “Airbus for batteries”, reports Joachim Becker in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Industry managers argue that even ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the “de facto leader of the global green caucus” after US President Donald Trump decided to pull out of the Paris Agreement, writes Jamie Horgan in a blog article for The American Interest. But with the nuclear phase-out ...
Climate protection protests in Germany’s western region Rhineland have become the new beacon of non-parliamentary leftist political activity in the country, Martin Kaul writes in a commentary for leftist newspaper Tageszeitung (taz). The planned blockade ...
Europe could cover more than 37 percent of its electricity demand with wind power turbines by the end of the next decade, an analysis by Wind Europe says. The industry association has modelled three different scenarios for wind power investment levels and ...
15 Nov 2017, 00:00 The German coalition talks on climate and energy policy stumble over a dispute over the reduction of coal fired power production. Just days before exploratory talks are scheduled to finish, the Green Party and its negotiating partners ...
The planned commission that will prepare the end of coal-fired power production in Germany does not include enough representatives from eastern Germany, the Left Party was quoted as saying in an article written by the news agency dpa and carried by the ...
Daimler’s ambitious e-mobility plans are in trouble, according to the business daily Handelsblatt. The maker of Mercedes cars has postponed the launch of its electric sub-brand “EQ” citing technical problems and battery-related bottlenecks, write Markus ...
Diesel remains an option for about one out of three drivers in Germany, according to a poll by statistics service statista. Petrol cars were preferred by the largest share of respondents, topping the list with 71 percent, followed by hybrids with 41 ...
Greenpeace Germany has published a study proposing “ambitious measures” to decarbonise German transport by 2035, carried out by Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. To succeed, the scenario demands “a comprehensive paradigm shift 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 & ...
Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), WWF Germany and other environmental and development NGOs in the umbrella organisation DNR have presented a proposal for Germany to reach its 2020 goals. The emergency climate protection programme includes concrete ...
Three of the remaining eight German nuclear power stations are currently offline, writes renewable energy industry institute IWR in an article on IWR Online. Gundremmingen C and Isar 2 were offline for about a month in the summer for routine inspections, ...
The next federal government should help low-income households afford electricity, through measures such as special rates or free basic volumes that cannot be cut off, Timot Szent-Ivanyi says in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Rundschau. Szent-Ivanyi says ...
An “ideological war” in Germany’s energy policy puts thousands of jobs and the country’s energy supply security at stake, the mining union IG BCE says in a press release. Speaking at a rally held near the Niederaußem coal-fired power plant in the western ...
German carmaker VW will focus on competing with US e-carmaker Tesla in its home market to avoid trailing behind the US company in electric mobility, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. As Tesla shifts from offering expensive e-cars to cheaper ...
German utility RWE and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia have rejected a court settlement offer that would have allowed the company to continue producing lignite in its largest open pit mine on the proviso that it refrained from carrying out clearing ...
Peter Mosch, head of the workers’ council of German carmaker Audi, has criticised a management decision to locate production of the company’s second electric car abroad, Philipp Vetter reports on Welt Online. “If the company management shows no ...
The European Commission attests Germany “serious deficits” in certain areas of the energy transition, writes Gerwin Klinger for energate messenger. In the 2018 country report on Germany, the Commission says that Germany is on track to meet its Europe2020 ...
The German discussion about the energy transition is “marked by polarisation, polemic, and misleading reasoning”, writes former energy industry manager Thomas Unnerstall in a guest commentary in Handelsblatt. One side criticises “exploding costs” and “a ...
Around 6,000 European climate change activists aiming to "block coal infrastructure, to call for an immediate phase-out" of lignite mining, have gathered in Germany's coal districts, writes Chase Winter in an article for Deutsche Welle. ...
Sustainability criteria, such as climate protection, are becoming more and more important for major companies, and new developments in data transparency increase the pressure on them to act accordingly, Jan Willmroth writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Former ...
The refunds that nuclear utilities E.ON, RWE and EnBW can expect after Germany’s constitutional court ruled the nuclear fuel tax law unconstitutional should be used to lower electricity prices, according to the Consumer Organisation Baden-Wuerttemberg, ...
Germany will likely miss several of its key energy transition goals, according to leading experts commissioned by the German economy ministry (BMWi) to monitor the progress of the country‘s energy transition. Among the three elements of the government& ...
Fishermen in the Netherlands have protested against the rapid growth of offshore wind power capacity in the North Sea, The Guardian reports. “Dutch, German, and British turbines are pushing us out of the southern part of the North Sea. About half a per ...
Should the next German government decide on a speedy exit from coal-fired power generation, no company would be affected as much as German utility RWE, Europe’s largest CO₂ emitter, writes Jürgen Flauger in Handelsblatt. RWE is in a better financial ...
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 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 ...
Many more buildings than reported by the federal economy ministry can be made accessible for the new tenant power law, according to a study by Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), commissioned by the Green group in the Bundestag. Read the ...
Members of the German business association Economic Council, associated with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), want an end to the grand government coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), and call for a “realignment” of the country’s ...
Germany’s indignation over the US Senate’s planned expansion of economic sanctions on Russia illustrates “the whole extent of irritation in the current transatlantic relationship”, Richard Herzinger writes in Die Welt. Leading German officials find ...
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, ...
The Russian government has said it is ready to resist "illegal" attempts to intervene in the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project that it plans together with Germany, as the US government has reiterated its ...
The chief energy policy negotiator of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU in the ongoing ‘Jamaica coalition’ talks, North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) State Premier Armin Laschet, said that Germany could give up coal-fired power production by ...
Due to climate change, droughts in Europe will last longer, affect greater areas, and have an impact on more people, according to an article published in Nature Climate Change by an international team of scientists coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for ...
The diesel emissions scandal, with looming inner-city driving bans and decreasing resale values of used diesel cars, are driving more and more companies to switch their fleets to electric vehicles, Andreas Schulte writes for the Handelsblatt. In the short ...
The US negotiating team is “working hard to water down” climate texts for the upcoming G20 summit at the preceding negotiations, said International Executive Director at Greenpeace Jennifer Morgan at the Global Solidarity Summit in Hamburg. It is ...
An expansion of the available area for solar power plants has led to “a significant drop of the price level” in the latest round of PV auctions in Germany, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has said in a press release. The average support rate for new ...
It is still unclear if so-called “environmental bonuses” offered by German car manufacturers to customers switching away from an old diesel car would actually help protect the environment, writes Martin Gropp in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Germany did “a fantastic job” working for climate protection at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July, said former US Vice President Al Gore in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD. “I admire Germany’s leadership,” said Gore. “Chancellor [Angela] ...
Germany’s nuclear fund is meant to cover the costs accruing from the country’s nuclear phase-out for generations to come. If – and only if- the fund is managed well, taxpayers will not have to top it up, Helmut Bünder and Brigitte Koch write in ...
Diesel technology has long been hailed as a climate-friendly alternative to petrol but has suddenly come under intense fire, amounting to “ a broadside against Germany’s leading industry,” Alfred Gaffal, president of Bavarian industry association vbw, ...
Wind power company Senvion has rejected a workers’ council job recovery plan and is set to move rotor manufacturing for its turbines from the northern German city of Bremerhaven to Portugal, citing increasing international competition and price pressure, ...
Heat pumps as an alternative to fossil fuels for heating could be a viable option for northern German regions but less so in the country’s south, Harald Czycholl writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Northern German regions, like neighbouring Denmark, ...
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 ...
Petrol station operators in Germany will take their time before entering the e-vehicle charging business in earnest, as charging points are far from being used to full capacity for now, writes Birger Nicolai for Welt Online. “We are a commercial company. ...
The German Energiewende could fail due to policymakers’ unrealistic goal of an energy system relying almost entirely on electricity by 2050, former German Energy Agency head Stephan Kohler writes in an op-ed for the Handelsblatt. “There has probably never ...
The new German government sticks to the target of bringing one million electric cars onto the roads by 2020. In a reply to a parliamentary enquiry by the Green Party, the government says both industry and government will have to continue their efforts, ...
US company General Electric (GE) will ramp up its investment in wind power in Germany in a bid to revive its ailing business, Axel Höpner and Kathrin Witsch write in the Handelsblatt. The veteran US manufacturer, which has recently got booted from the Dow ...
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 ...
Germany and Denmark have agreed to increase the minimum cross-border electricity trade, according to a press release by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). “The agreement acknowledges that Germany is undergoing a fundamental ...
A concerted lobbying effort by German carmakers was crucial in watering down new EU car fleet emission targets for the period after 2021, reports Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It seems a call from Germany’s chief car lobbyist, [car industry association VDA head] ...
German power customers demand more green power than domestic wind, solar and biogas installations can provide, prompting energy providers to buy Norwegian certificates that allow them to label their product as “green”, Jens Heitmann writes for ...
Lower Saxony should become a “ pioneer region ” for storing excess wind power by converting it into hydrogen, the German federal state’s environment minister, Olaf Lies, told the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. Lies argues that Germany needs power-to-gas ...
The BDI study showing that climate protection and economic growth can go hand in hand should kill off the last arguments against ambitious climate protection, according to Greenpeace. “The economic association is right to call for planning security in ...
Due to its inner unity, reliability and common interests like free trade and climate protection, China has become the most important G20 ally for Germany, besides other EU states, writes Finn Mayer-Kuckuk for Frankfurter Rundschau. Major topics of dispute ...
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is concerned about energy-related measures in the sanction proposals by the US against Russia, reports Ryan Heath for Politico. Juncker believes they could be used unfairly against European energy companies, ...
Germany can take the most climate-damaging coal power stations off the grid by 2020 while also accelerating its nuclear exit without putting supply security at risk, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND). In a detailed “shutdown ...
Germany currently faces a “Fukushima moment of the German automobile industry”, Green Party head Cem Özdemir told Ann-Kathrin Büüsker for Deutschlandfunk. Germany now had to invest billions of euros in correcting mistakes, instead of investing in the ...
Producing gas using renewable power is crucial for the success of Germany’s energy transition if the country decides to pursue ambitious climate targets, according to a meta-analysis by energy management consultancy enervis commissioned by Leipzig natural ...
The decision by US President Donald Trump to pull his country out of the global Paris Climate Agreement has been met with dismay and defiance by the German government, Silke Kersting writes on Handelsblatt Online. Meanwhile, environmental organisations ...
The parties negotiating a ‘Jamaica coalition’ in Germany had made a lot of progress on energy and climate policy, as well as on several other policy areas, before the pro-market FDP party pulled out of the talks, Cerstin Gammelin and Markus Balser report ...
The German government has the “almost unique opportunity” to make German car manufacturers “finally take decisions” to find a solution for the diesel emissions scandal, writes Peter Fahrenholz in an opinion piece in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The auto industry ...
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 ...
Grid operator Tennet, one of Germany’s four major electricity network companies, has warned that a toll on power transmission from Germany’s windy north to industrial centres in the south could create substantial obstacles for the country’s planned ...
