Germany’s grand coalition government is considering ways to enable municipalities located near wind farms to share in the profits of the turbines, reports Daniel Wetzel in Welt am Sonntag. The economy ministry has invited experts to discuss several ...
Energy utility RWE has transferred two of its lignite-fired power station units in North-Rhine Westphalia into the so called emergency standby reserve. Four of eight coal station units have thus far been committed to the reserve, where they will remain ...
Germany could flunk yet another climate target if it doesn’t increase energy efficiency, Susanne Ehlerding writes for Tagesspiegel Background. Germany’s efficiency target – like the EU’s – is to reduce primary energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 ...
The planned Russian-German natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 is currently the “most controversial and difficult question of EU energy security”, said Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), at the German energy ...
The market for green bonds is still comparably small, but ecologically sustainable bonds become more significant as climate protection is increasingly important for the population, writes Markus Frühauf in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Green Bonds ...
Power generating units with a total capacity of about 13,658 megawatt (MW) are scheduled for closure in Germany, but only about 7,667 MW have already been shut down, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has said in a press release. The remainder of nearly ...
The German Green Party’s new-found readiness to compromise on a coal exit and a ban on combustion engines by 2030 might give the impression that the party is caving in to pressure from its negotiating partners in the Jamaica coalition talks but this view ...
The German economic experts’ council (Wirtschaftsweise) has called for the introduction of a uniform price on carbon emissions that covers the transport and energy sector as well as individual households. In its annual report, the council of five economic ...
A small circle of representatives from CDU, CSU, FDP and the Green Party will meet this afternoon (2 November) to try and find common ground on climate and energy in the ongoing exploratory talks ahead of official negotiations to build the next government ...
The current narrative that Germany’s mighty car industry has failed to jump on the electric mobility bandwagon at the right time is a distortion of reality- and the country is on track to become a leading producer of electric vehicles, Christoph M. ...
The row between Germany, Austria and the US Senate over a planned expansion of US sanctions on Russia has renewed the energy transition’s importance as a means to achieve greater energy supply security, Petra Pinzler writes in a column for Zeit Online. ...
Germany’s car industry “ keeps falling deeper into the hole that it is digging for itself ” two years after the dieselgate scandal broke, Carsten Knop writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germany’s “poster industry” is not only badly ...
Germany should aim to achieve its 2020 emissions reduction goals at some point in the 2020s instead of “new year’s eve 2020”, Michael Vassiliadis, head of mining labour union IG BCE, has said at a union conference in Berlin. “It’s not a sin to stretch the ...
The southern German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg plans to considerably step up efforts to promote e-mobility, the state’s Green-led government said in a press release. “The aim is to make Baden-Wuerttemberg Germany’s centre for the development and ...
The diesel emissions fraud scandal has given impetus to calls for a swift transition to electric cars in Germany, but despite great technological progress, the technology continues to be too expensive and impractical to replace conventional cars, ...
The energy costs for energy intensive industries in Germany in December 2016 have reached the lowest level in seven years, the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut) said in a press release. The energy cost index in late 2016, which measures energy ...
Radio and podcast moderator Holger Klein interviews Holger Hanselka, president of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), about the current state of Germany’s generational Energiewende (energy transition) project in a German online podcast for ...
The Green Party not being part of the federal government for the past 12 years is a “medium-sized economic and ecologic disaster”, writes Bernd Ulrich in an opinion piece in German weekly Die Zeit. The current emissions and carmaker cartel scandal showed ...
A sharp emissions reduction by 2050 will likely benefit Germany’s economy, according to a study summary draft by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) seen by 91tv. An “80 percent climate path is possible with a neutral to positive effect ...
The German town of Wolfhagen reclaimed its grid when a lease with E.ON expired more than ten years ago, overcoming strong resistance from the utility, and setting off a wave of municipalities taking back control of privatised infrastructure, reports ...
Carbon prices in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) are set to double by 2021 and could quadruple to 55 euros a tonne by 2030 if the European Commission ultimately legislates to align the bloc’s current emissions targets with the Paris ...
Power customers in Germany on average paid about 2.5 percent more for electricity in June than they did in January, price comparison website Check24 says in a listing seen by 91tv. An average household with a consumption of about 3,500 ...
Germany’s carmakers might face a wave of lawsuits after reports over possible collusion to fix costs and technology emerged last week, business newspaper Handelsblatt reports. Tens of thousands of customers might seek compensation for “possibly paying a ...
A CO 2 tax or European wide minimum price for CO 2 emissions as suggested by French President Emmanuel Macron is worth thinking about, writes Andreas Mihm in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The current system is “inefficient, prone to lobby interests ...
The expected boom in e-car production shifts Germany’s historical mining region in the Ore Mountains on the Czech-German border back into the focus of industry actors, Zacharias Zacharakis writes on Die Zeit Online. The Ore Mountains hold about 500,000 ...
The likely new coalition government in Germany’s most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) seems to aim for watering down energy efficiency standards for new buildings, Environmental Action Germany (DUH) said in a press release. During ...
Germany has a total of 10,700 charging points at 4,730 stations for electric cars, reports the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW). Of these, 530 are fast-charging stations. Charging points operated by energy companies and other ...
The Green Party might have been the first to call for a phase-out of the combustion engine, yet they could still end up without political gains, Barbara Gillmann writes in a commentary on business website Handelsblatt Online. Setting an end date for the ...
There is a large gap between the standards in climate protection that German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaims on an international stage and the actual results of her policies at home, according to a Greenpeace Germany paper. The NGO charts Merkel’s ...
29 May 2017, 00:00 Germany’s energy transition is a vast national project that is reshaping the entire country. But it is happening on a local level, too. Here, the 91tv looks at the path that one eastern German city is taking towards ...
Germany exported cars and car components worth 234.4 billion euros in 2017, the highest figure of any industry, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said in a press release. Machinery and chemical products rank second and third, with 183.6 ...
The European Commission pressures Germany to make progress on expanding its power transmission grid and the important north-south SuedLink and SuedOstLink power lines, Michael Bauchmüller and Thomas Kirchner write in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The 700 ...
The energy cost burdens on the German industry reached a new multi-year low in March 2017, despite a rising renewables surcharge, according to an analysis by Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut), German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and ...
Germany supports renewable energies with more money than any other country on Earth, but the effect on CO 2 emissions remains limited, according to Justus Haucap, head of the Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) at Düsseldorf University. Without a ...
Driving bans on diesel vehicles will take effect on selected roads in Hamburg after Whitsunday, the city’s environment senator, Jens Kerstan, told the newspaper Die Welt. “The road signs have been ordered, and once everything is settled legally, the rule ...
Carmaker VW will significantly step up the production of the electric version of its trademark Golf model at its e-car factory in Dresden due to a growing demand, the company says in a press release. Germany’s largest carmaker will increase production in ...
Free Democratic Party (FDP) leader Christian Lindner wants to slow down wind power expansion throughout Germany, after having pushed for similar policy in the new coalition agreement for North Rhine-Westphalia, reports news agency dpa. “It doesn’t make ...
Chemical companies BASF, Evonik, and Clariant seek to use excess renewable power in Germany to make synthetic fuels and other chemicals, reports Ludwig Burger for Reuters. According to Germany’s chemical industry lobby VCI, so-called power-to-X technology ...
Christian Lindner, the head of German free-market liberal party FDP, has said his party and the German Greens are especially at odds over their approaches to energy policy. In an interview with Austrian newspaper Die Presse, Lindner said the Greens were ...
The planned Russian-German natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 “is a raw example of how Berlin captures the EU machinery,” writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in an article for The Telegraph. “Brussels set aside EU law on Nord Stream, yet enforced it on ...
China is giving automakers an extra year to prepare for phasing out fossil-fuel powered vehicles in the world’s largest auto market, reports Bloomberg. Carmakers will need to fulfil e-car quotas from 2019, one year later than originally planned, or face ...
German carmakers say it is nearly impossible to retrofit hardware to clean up diesel engines, but this is simply untrue, according to the German car drivers’ association ADAC, Max Hägler reports in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Hägler writes that many German ...
25 Sep 2017, 00:00 Germans have handed Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term in the country’s federal election. Most likely, Merkel will have to start talks with the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Green Party to form a so-called "Jamaica coalition, ...
Over half of the power consumed within transmission grid operator 50Hertz’s control area last year (53.4 percent) was generated from renewables, the company says in a press release presenting its 2017 balance sheet. “We are proud that with this record ...
Increased investments in Asia helped German manufacturers of components, machines and equipment for the photovoltaic industry boost turnover by 51 percent in the second quarter of 2017, compared to the first quarter, writes the German Engineering ...
German utility Steag is currently in the process of selling stakes in power grids, district heating, wind parks and bio energy in several countries to help the company through its current crisis, writes Jürgen Flauger in an article for the Handelsblatt. ...
The German government could introduce a speedy coal exit without having to pay compensation to power plant operators, think tank Agora Energiewende* writes in a press release. Law firm BeckerBüttnerHeld (BBH) analysed last year’s nuclear phase-out ...
Germany may have “led the way in rhetoric on energy in the European Union […] but has not managed to match deeds to words”, Nick Butler, visiting professor and chair of the Kings Policy Institute at Kings College London writes in an op-ed for the ...
11 May 2017, 00:00 Once the flagship of German solar energy, PV panel manufacturer SolarWorld has filed for insolvency, in what founder Frank Asbeck called a “bitter step for the German solar industry”. The company blamed plummeting prices caused by ...
A global emissions trading system would be the ideal instrument to fight climate change, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “It would be best if damaging emissions had a price world-wide. A global carbon market would be an incentive for the ...
The German chancellor’s track record on environmental policy has been a disaster, writes George Monbiot in an opinion piece for The Guardian. “What counts, and should be judged, as she seeks a fourth term as German chancellor in the elections on Sunday, ...
The German Energiewende policy endangers the country’s industry competitiveness, growth and employment, says an alliance of mining union IG BCE and businesses such as E.ON, Linde, BASF and Merck in a joint paper. The goal of competitiveness should be on ...
Allegations of a cartel of Germany’s most important carmakers to agree on prices, suppliers and technology standards have cost the industry a great deal of credibility, the Green Party state premier of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, has said, ...
The energy transition and climate protection are not among the new government’s priorities, and it would be more honest to give up on Germany’s climate targets altogether, writes Daniel Wetzel in a commentary in Die Welt. The energy transition urgently ...
A regional branch of Germany’s Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) intends to push for a moratorium on wind power expansion in northern federal states in order to protect birds from being killed by wind turbine blades, David Joram writes in ...
Germany’s offshore wind industry calls on the next federal government to increase the expansion corridors for offshore wind to at least 20 gigawatt (GW) by 2030 (at the moment: 15 GW), and to 30 GW by 2035, according to a joint press release issued by ...
Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW and automotive industry supplier Continental contribute over 40 percent to the total revenue and one third to the profits of Germany’s stock index DAX, which comprises the country’s 30 largest market-listed companies, Daniel ...
The German government has called on China to postpone its planned e-car quota for carmakers, Handelsblatt reports. The four largest carmaker associations from Europe, the US, Japan and South Korea have all requested that China amend the quota and grant ...
Contrary to “expectations by many,” there is still no deterioration of the financing situation for municipal utilities, according to a study by consultancy PwC. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) on average increased ...
The number of companies in Germany that do not pay grid fees is set to rise further, Spiegel Online reports. According to an answer by the federal government to a parliamentary inquiry by the Green Party, there were about 3,670 fee exemptions in 2016 and ...
The new government of conservative CDU and business-oriented FDP in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) seems intent on ramping up climate protection goals and quickly remedying air pollution in inner cities associated with car ...
The German cabinet has paved the way for projects located in other EU countries to take part in national renewable energy auctions, the Federal Ministry for the Economy and Energy (BMWi) has said in a press release. Five percent of annual bidding capacity ...
Scientists have discussed the possibility of geo-engineering to curb the warming of the earth's atmosphere, Christoph Schrader writes on Spiegel Online. At a conference in Berlin, researchers debated measures such as reforestation, extracting CO 2 ...
Police in the western German city of Aachen are worried that the planned anti-coal protests in the Rhineland mining region next week could turn violent, Reiner Burger reports for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Dirk Weinspach, chief of Aachen’s police, ...
The shift to electric mobility has become unstoppable even if e-car sales are still low, writes Michael Gerster in an analysis for the car industry publication Automobilwoche. He argues that major car companies are now so committed to the technology that ...
The Prime Minister of Germany’s most populous federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Armin Laschet, will represent Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party in the areas of climate, energy, and transport in the ‘Jamaica coalition’ talks, the ...
The eastern German coal mining region of Lusatia should receive 100 million euros in public funds per year from 2019 on to facilitate the “structural development” of the local economy that is currently centred on lignite production, think tank Agora ...
German energy start-up Conjoule is set to receive about 3.5 million euros from controversial Japanese nuclear plant operator Tepco, Jana Kugoth writes in Welt Online. The operator of the notorious Fukushima nuclear plant, which was severely damaged by an ...
The German Free Democratic Party (FDP) wants to “end the sustained subsidies system of the [Renewable Energy Act] EEG” with its priority grid access and feed-in tariffs for renewables, writes the party in its draft programme for the autumn federal ...
The European Commission is considering antitrust proceedings against Germany’s largest transmission grid operator, TenneT, over suspicions that the company is creating artificial power bottlenecks on the Danish-German border, the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
In spite of a record wind power expansion in the western German region of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the country’s largest federal state still trails in terms of renewables expansion, Welt Online reports. In 2017, the state added 312 wind turbines, ...
In light of the latest accusations against German carmaker Daimler of having equipped its vehicles with manipulation software for emissions tests, environment and consumer protection organisation Environmental Action Germany (DUH) is ready to file a ...
The German government should come to realise that the planned gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea “will not be implemented” and “save Europe further disputes on this matter”, Green politician Reinhard Bütikofer writes in a ...
19 May 2017, 00:00 The dominance of citizens’ energy projects among the successful bids in Germany’s first onshore wind power auctions comes as a big surprise for industry observers. Not only did citizen cooperatives account for the bulk of accepted ...
Germany installed the most wind power capacity in Europe in 2017, with 42 percent of the total EU installations, writes industry association Wind Europe in its annual report. The country installed 6.6 gigawatt, followed by the UK with 4.3 gigawatt and ...
The deconstruction of the nuclear plant Isar 1 in the southern German state of Bavaria is proceeding as planned, according to the state’s environment ministry. But environmentalists are concerned that radioactive fuel elements remain in the plant as ...
The German Industry Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF) has welcomed the government’s new “Energy efficiency and heat from renewable energies,” strategy, saying that measures to pool support schemes are long overdue. In a statement, DENEFF called ...
The German Farmers' Association (DBV) has criticised German and EU transport policy, saying conventional biofuels were necessary for climate protection beyond 2020. “Traditional biofuels” based on rapeseed, sugar beet or grains are sustainable, and ...
Chinese e-car quotas could turn into a shock for the German car industry, with an effect comparable to the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on utilities, writes Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, head of the Center Automotive Research (CAR) at the University ...
Germany’s carmakers should follow the example of Swedish competitor Volvo and push for a quick transition towards electric cars, car industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer told Frankfurter Rundschau. Dudenhöffer said he believed the Chinese car market will ...
Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) “sugarcoated” reports on the emissions scandal investigation, bowing to pressure from the auto industry, writes Hanno Kautz in an article for Bild. In the original version of the report from 2016, KBA ...
Newly created SolarWorld Industries GmbH has officially taken over the production sites of insolvent German manufacturer SolarWorld AG, writes Sandra Enkhardt for pv magazine. “The new company intends to restart activities with 700 MW of annual production ...
Switching to less resource-intensive consumption patterns is part of the solution to cutting carbon emissions, Felix Ekardt writes in a guest article for Zeit Online. Germany can only achieve its climate targets if people are willing to reduce their ...
The next German government after Sunday’s election should begin with “a critical examination” of existing climate and energy policy guidelines and decide new, “more realistic” ones, writes Andreas Mihm in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ...
Car sharing in Germany will experience a push after a new law comes into force on 1 September, writes Michael Kuntz in an opinion piece in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Among other things, the regulation makes it easier for states, cities and municipalities to ...
Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, has test flown the all-electric two-seater aircraft developed by German drone firm Volocopter in an ambitious bid to become the first city with flying taxis, reports Noah Browning for Reuters. Backed by ...
04 Jul 2017, 00:00 At the Hamburg summit, the G20 leaders must go beyond mere lip services and present concrete proposals on how they will implement the Paris Climate Agreement, Christoph Bals, policy director of environmental NGO Germanwatch, tells Clean ...
German utilities “have fallen far behind their competitors in Europe and the US,” according to Johannes Teyssen, CEO of German utility E.ON. The companies’ meagre performance over the last decade has meant investments in research and development are lower ...
German postal service Deutsche Post has found the first major customer for its in-house produced electric vehicle Street Scooter, Florian Zerfass writes in weekly Bild am Sonntag (BamS). Fish wholesaler Deutsche See is buying 80 scooters for distributing ...
Green power provider Greenpeace Energy uses “the weapons of capital” to push for a German coal exit by offering a power contract that lets customers invest in renewables expansion in the country’s lignite areas, writes Michael Bauchmüller for Süddeutsche ...
Federal transport minister Alexander Dobrindt announced the recall of certain models of Porsche’s SUV Cayenne equipped with 3-litre diesel engines. It also ordered a registration moratorium for new vehicles, after tests by the ministry (BMVi) and the ...
The head of the German Greens’ parliamentary group, Anton Hofreiter, says a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU and free-market FDP is far from a fait accompli. “It’s not a done deal at all,” Hofreiter said in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau. ...
It is economically beneficial for G20 member states to invest in climate protection measures, according to the new report "Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth" by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), presented ...
The tenant electricity draft law introduced by Germany’s economy ministry (BMWi) is an “utterly wrong” policy approach that turns the principle of “competition instead of allocation” upside down, Andreas Mihm writes in an opinion piece for Frankfurter ...
The decision by Swedish carmaker Volvo to equip all its cars with electric engines by 2019 demonstrates the rapid change seen in the international automotive industry, Manfred Kriener writes in a commentary for Tageszeitung (taz). “Volvo has understood,” ...
The federal economy ministry (BMWi) is working on a concept for technology-independent renewables support auctions that would have wind turbines competing against solar PV facilities, writes Stefan Schultz for Spiegel Online. In a pilot project from 2018 ...
German Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor candidate Martin Schulz’s call for a European e-mobility quota "seems like a shot from a blank gun”, writes Peter Fahrenholz in an opinion piece in Süddeutsche Zeitung. “As a Europe expert, Schulz knows only ...
Greenpeace’s Andrée Böhling welcomed the call for a European e-mobility quota by SPD chancellor candidate Martin Schulz as “a right signal to manufacturers and consumers”, but criticises the lack of a date. “If the chancellor candidate is serious about ...
Rapid greenhouse-gas emissions reductions are needed to keep in check both the costs of the transition towards climate stabilisation and the amount of CO2 that will have to be removed from the atmosphere, write researchers from the Potsdam Institute for ...
The changes brought about in Germany’s energy supply structure by the Energiewende pose a great threat to the country’s municipal utilities, Thomas Brucker writes in a study for the SPD-associated Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). Regional energy ...
Moral responsibility plays a more important role in environmental policy than previously thought, according to a new study by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für ...
Even technical retrofitting of “a significant share” of German diesel cars would hardly reduce the nitrogen oxide concentration in cities, say internal documents of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), reports Morton Freidel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
The G20 is in principle “an acceptable format” to find solutions for big global challenges, but the Hamburg summit “must deliver results” given the costs associated with hosting the event, said Sweelin Heuss, managing director at Greenpeace Germany, at a ...
Companies for whom offshore wind parks are a core business, but were not successful in Germany’s first competitive auction for the technology, will “have a problem”, as only one more auction was planned for offshore expansion until 2025, writes Andreas ...
Grid operator Amprion’s statement that Germany’s power grid was at its limits last winter shows that the energy transition is not on track, because supply security was endangered, writes Andreas Mihm in an opinion piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Germany no longer is among the countries most engaged in advancing climate protection, Werner Rätz, co-founder of global justice group Attac Germany says in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau. This year’s G20 host is advancing its energy transition ...
Germany’s Energiewende is not a model for Switzerland, Christoph Eisenring writes in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as the country gears up for a referendum about the Swiss government’s energy strategy 2050, which includes a nuclear phase-out. German ...
German utility E.ON might sell its remaining share in fossil spin-off Uniper to Finnish utility Fortum for 3.8 billion euros, the company said in a statement. The announcement was greeted by dismay by Uniper, which could be broken up by Fortum, according ...
The financial contribution German carmakers BMW, Daimler and VW will make to the “clean air emergency programme” has been secured, acting transport minister Christian Schmidt has said in a press release. “The German manufacturers will pay the share of 250 ...
Germany’s car industry has increased its share of gross value added in the country between 2005 and 2015 to 4.5 percent, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) says in a press release. Contrary to most European countries, the industry’s importance has ...
The European Union’s 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and objectives “will not be achieved without significant additional efforts”, says a new “Landscape Review of EU Action on Energy and Climate Change” published by the European ...
German carmaker Volkswagen plans to comply with China’s planned quota for e-cars without buying additional credits from competitors, reports Jake Spring for Reuters. "We are fully with all forces working to be able to fulfil this quota system already ...
German homeowners installed about 25,000 power storages in their houses in 2016, more than in any other European country, but the real boom of “ decentralised power supply ” might only start in 2020, Stefan Mayr writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2020 will be ...
Underground salt caverns in the northern German region of Frisia could become the “world’s largest battery”, German energy company EWE AG told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. EWE plans to use the caverns as large redox flow batteries. Commonly, climate ...
11 Dec 2017, 00:00 A round of fresh ‘green’ finance pledges by companies and investors marks the kickoff on 12 December in Paris of a climate finance summit initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron. However, NGOs say that the developments so far have ...
Energy experts of Germany’s grand coalition of conservatives (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) have rebuffed the Green Party’s plans for an accelerated coal exit. “We cannot phase out both nuclear and coal-fired power production within 15 or 20 years,” ...
Considerable discrepancies between the German Green Party’s draft election programme and the ’ Ten-point plan for Green governance ‘ it published in May will make this weekend’s federal party conference difficult, writes Henrike Roßbach in an opinion ...
The EU should block the Russian-German gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 not only for reasons of energy security, but also on climate grounds, writes Marcin Stoczkiewicz, head of Central & Eastern Europe at ClientEarth in a guest commentary on ...
One week ahead of the general election, the German political parties already debate possible scenarios for forming a coalition government, reports Lutz Haverkamp in Tagesspiegel. At a special party conference, the Greens’ top candidate, Katrin Göring ...
Nearly 50 percent of the almost 690,000 jobs in Germany’s energy industry depend on renewable energy sources, Hinrich Neumann writes on website Top Agrar. According to a study by energy consultancy GWS Research, almost 340,000 people were employed in the ...
According to many scientists, simply lowering emissions will not be enough to slow down global warming, and we need better technology or at least research into and discussions about ridding the atmosphere of CO₂ already emitted, writes Andreas Mihm in ...
German utility EnBW has announced third quarter results, saying earnings were up and its balance sheet was “significantly stronger”. It says for the first time since 2010, it expects its operating result to rise again in 2017, crediting the consolidation ...
Policymakers and companies must urgently pay attention to the commodities required by a large-scale roll-out of electric mobility to avoid bottlenecks and secure a sustainable supply, according to mobility think tank Agora Verkehrswende*. “Securing the ...
Damages discovered at Germany’s Brokdorf nuclear power plant seem to support the theory that nuclear power is not suitable as a bridging technology which could rapidly adapt power generation to the fluctuating supply of renewable electricity, writes ...
The German-Japanese Energy Transition Council (GJETC), a bi-national research council for cooperation in energy transition and climate action established in 2016, has published its first major studies on research synergies between the two countries, the ...
German climate policy often overlooks the important principle of keeping costs at a minimum, economists Hubertus Bardt and Thilo Schaefer write in a guest commentary for the Handelsblatt. “Of course, there might be good reasons to diverge from this ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democratic challenger Martin Schulz failed to address climate and energy policies in Sunday’s TV debate ahead of the 24 September federal election. The debate focused mostly on questions related to refugee ...
G20 finance ministers may encourage private funding for climate change instead of government pledges, according to a draft statement for the upcoming G20 finance ministers meeting, writes Joe Ryan for Bloomberg. This was a significant shift from what ...
German car supplier Schaeffler’s lower profit expectation might herald a watershed for the country’s entire automotive industry, Max Hägler writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The supplier’s plunge in the stock market could be a “warning shot” that electric ...
The German development ministry (BMZ) has concluded so-called reform partnerships with three African countries that include expanding the use of renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency, the BMZ said in a press release. Tunisia, Ivory ...
Two of Germany’s largest energy companies, RWE and E.ON, will publish their balance of accounts this month – a move that is likely to highlight the difficulties the industry is still grappling with amid the country’s energy transition, news agency dpa ...
High power prices, a heavy dependency on coal power and stagnating greenhouse gas emissions mean Germany is no longer playing a leading role in the international energy transition, according to McKinsey’s new global Energy Transition Index, done in ...
Greenpeace Germany has proposed to the next German federal government an emergency programme for coal to “largely reach” the country’s 2020 climate target. The proposal focuses on throttling or shutting down the “oldest and dirtiest lignite power plants,” ...
Solar power costs are falling so rapidly that the technology will replace fossil fuels like coal much faster than previously forecast, Jess Shankleman and Hayley Warren say in an article for Bloomberg. According to an outlook by Bloomberg New Energy ...
The German attachment to “gas-guzzling autos” is part of the reason for the country’s sustained high CO 2 emissions, Jill Petzinger writes on website Quartz. According to transport expert Gregor Kolbe, “RIP”, a combination of range, infrastructure and ...
Germany’s efforts to protect the climate by reducing its CO 2 emissions have largely been in vain because the country falls short of implementing a much needed coal phase-out, Petra Pinzler writes in weekly newspaper Die Zeit. “The country of the ...
The federal cabinet approved reform drafts for the energy and electricity tax laws to adapt regulation on national tax exemptions to EU state aid law, the finance ministry writes in a press release. The draft would extend tax exemptions for natural ...
Energy market group AG Energiebilanzen has published a comprehensive paper with data on Germany’s energy use in 2017. The paper gives more detail to the group’s report from 21 December 2017 that a strong economy had pushed up Germany’s primary energy ...
Andreas Mihm takes a closer look at NordLink, a direct power connection between Norway and Germany for the exchange of Norwegian hydropower and German wind energy, in a long article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The more the Energiewende was ...
The German car industry has high hopes for synthetic fuels, but their plans could backfire in light of global efforts to electrify transport, writes Jens Tartler in Tagesspiegel. Synthetic fuels, produced with the help of renewable electricity, could be ...
While Britain, France, Spain and Greece are making steps to end the era of diesel cars, “German auto executives and political leaders meeting in Berlin on Wednesday appeared determined to rescue the technology”, write Melissa Eddy and Jack Ewing in New ...
Germany risks “tacitly joining Donald Trump in turning its back on the Paris climate change deal” as the state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg “have vowed to protect” the lignite mining industry, writes Olaf Storbeck for Reuters ...
German energy company E.ON said it would increase its dividend next year after a huge government refund on nuclear-fuel tax allowed it to reduce debt by nearly 5 billion euros, writes Guy Chazan for Financial Times. “By continuing to systematically ...
The head negotiators of CDU and SPD in the coalition talks have praised the decisions on energy and climate policy as “a good compromise” (Armin Laschet, CDU) and a “huge step forward” (Barbara Hendricks, SPD). Hendricks, who is acting environment ...
The TV debate between conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and her social-democratic rival Martin Schulz three weeks before the parliamentary elections “was billed by broadcasters as a duel but at times better resembled a duet,” Griff Witte writes for ...
The new governing coalition in Germany’s most populous federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) may not care too much about climate protection despite ambitious promises, Ralf Köpke writes in a commentary for Energie & Management. The conservative ...
To mark the end of hard coal mining in Germany, players from rival football clubs Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04 and other clubs in the western German Ruhr coal mining area will team up for a friendly match against the Polish national team in 2018, ...
Following the landmark 27 February court ruling on diesel driving bans, the incoming German government will consider the option of introducing a ’blue badge‘ as a federal measure to identify clean vehicles. “The issue will be taken on by the new ...
Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA) says the country ought to consider abandoning its diesel fuel tax privilege, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Berliner Morgenpost. UBA head Maria Krautzberger told newspaper Rheinische Post the ...
The Green Party emphasises the importance of solar power in a position paper ahead of the general elections in September, reports Passauer Neue Presse. “The caps for expansion, feed-in and self-consumption have led to an 80-percent slump in annual ...
The new law for finding a permanent nuclear repository in Germany aims “ to offer proof that an enlightened society can find a place for the waste that nobody wants to have,” Michael Bauchmüller writes in a commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung. But for this ...
The go-kart track where former German Formula 1 race driver and motorsports icon Michael Schumacher learned his trade is to fall prey to the expansion of the lignite mine Hambach of energy company RWE, public broadcaster WDR reports on his website. The ...
Bavarian carmaker BMW has put a joint e-car charging infrastructure project with carmaker Daimler on hold after Daimler became the first German manufacturer to make a voluntary disclosure to the authorities over cartel allegations, according to company ...
30 May 2017, 00:00 Germany’s energy transition is a vast national project that is reshaping the entire country- but it is not happening at an equal pace everywhere in the country. 91tv takes a look at the county Marburg-Biedenkopf in the central German ...
More than two million customers used car sharing services of 165 companies in Germany by the start of 2018, writes the Federal German Car Sharing Association (bcs) in a press release. “Car sharing is still a small market in regards to the total number of ...
The governments of Germany, Mexico, South Korea, California and several other countries and sub-national entities have pledged to intensify their cooperation on developing international carbon emissions trading, the International Carbon Action Partnership ...
Human transformation of the landscape to generate energy has been a constant feature in Germany for centuries, but today this activity seems to enrage more people than it used to, Matthias Köpf writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. While many people nowadays ...
05 May 2017, 00:00 Nicknamed the “cradle of the Energiewende” by its own government, Germany’s northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, embodies some of the most pressing challenges and solutions to the country’s energy turnaround. With their decision in ...
Top managers in German banks, insurers and saving banks have so far failed to grasp the international trend to take climate risks into account and adjust their business models accordingly, Henry Schäfer, professor for business administration and finance ...
It will be difficult for other parties to beat German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the upcoming federal elections, because she regularly takes proposals and demands of others and makes them her own, historian Martin H. Geyer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in ...
Li Shufu, chairman and owner of Chinese car company Zheijang Geely Holding Group, has acquired a 9.7 percent stake of Daimler AG, which represents the biggest investment by a Chinese company in an overseas automaker, reports Bloomberg. It is a deal “right ...
Germany imported less hard coal last year and imports are set to drop again in 2017, the German Coal Importers Association said, according to a report by Dow Jones Newswires. Imports fell by 4 percent to 55.2 million tons in 2016, and will dip again this ...
The Fraunhofer ISE institute in the southern German town of Freiburg has set a new world record for the most efficient solar cell, Bernward Janzing reports for tageszeitung (taz). The cell converts 21.9 percent of absorbed sunlight into electricity. Yet ...
Protestors temporarily interrupted German energy company RWE’s demolition of a protected church in the town of Immerath in western German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Manfred Kriener writes on klimaretter.info. Greenpeace activists occupied the ...
Rising temperatures associated with the man-made effect on global climate are likely to shift the bulk of Europe’s power demand from the continent’s north to the south, German research institution Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has ...
The share of renewables in German electricity generation grew from 29 percent in 2016 to a record 33 percent this year, according to preliminary calculations by the Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW). “The gap between coal and renewables in ...
Ten years after their introduction, the issuing of so-called green bonds grows at a remarkable pace, Germany’s state-owned KfW development bank writes in a research paper. Between 2015 and 2016, global releases of the bonds, whose issuers are obliged to ...
Germany's would-be governing coalition partners have concluded a treaty that is likely to result in a final deadline for coal-fired power production in Germany. The agreement reached after weeks of intensive talks largely confirms the most important ...
Strong demand for heavy sports utility vehicles (SUVs) means German carmarker Daimler has failed to reduce average emissions from its vehicle fleet for the first time since 2007, Handelsblatt Online reports. For the second year in a row, emissions stood ...
Germany’s solar market is back on a growth track, with new solar PV installations accounting for a total capacity of 900 megawatts in the first half of 2017, writes the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) in a press release. This was an increase of 75 ...
Replacing an old fossil-fuelled boiler with a new one saves less energy than often assumed, said the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE), based on a report published by the consultancy Econsult. Depending on the type of old boiler, 2 to 15 percent ...
The offer by some bidders in Germany’s first offshore wind power auction to build their projects with zero financial support has raised a lot of questions, Michael Bauchmüller writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Wind parks have been sponsored by the ...
The federal government and the car industry are the main culprits in bad air quality in cities, but both are keeping silent in the Federal Administrative Court case on driving bans, writes Michael Bauchmüller in a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. ...
The head of Norway’s national pension fund, Norges Bank CEO Yngve Slyngstad, says he is optimistic that Germany’s carmakers will manage to cope with big changes in their industry as it shifts from fossil combustion engines to new engine technologies, ...
About 220 wind turbines in the German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will have to be dismantled after 2020 because they lose eligibility for guaranteed feed-in tariffs after 20 years of service, Juliane Lange writes for Ostsee-Zeitung. It ...
German coal mining company Mibrag posted a 43.7 million euro loss in 2016, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reports. Mibrag, one of Germany’s four remaining lignite-mining companies, was suffering from Germany’s transition from fossil energy sources to renewables ...
China wants to become a global maker of e-cars, “take on the hegemony of Western and Asian producers,” and German carmakers risk being bypassed “if [they] don’t take notice” of these developments, writes Handelsblatt Global. While Western companies still ...
Germany’s parliament has approved legslation to authorise a search for a permanent nuclear waste storage site, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The search will be conducted across the country and is meant to find a solution by 2031, the ...
The public transport companies of several large German cities have formed an initiative to increase pressure on the auto industry to accelerate the development of electric buses, reports Ann-Kathrin Nezik in Der Spiegel. Carmakers had to prove that they ...
British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company Shell and ITM Power will build the world’s largest hydrogen electrolysis plant at Shell's Rhineland refinery in Germany, the companies announced in a press release. With a peak capacity of 10 megawatts, ...
With a record amount of 5.57 terawatt hours (TWh), Germany’s solar power plants in May almost generated as much electricity as all of the country’s nuclear power plants combined (5.65 TWh), the German Solar Industry Association (BSW Solar) said in a press ...
The preparation procedure for building Germany’s high-voltage transmission highway SuedLink has entered a crucial stage, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Welt Online. Following submission of the sectoral planning application for SuedLink’s ...
The German Green Party has strengthened its focus on ecology and economic transformation as core topics for its election campaign. Following the Green’s convention last weekend, the party published a set of amendments to its draft election campaign ...
German utility RWE and French counterpart Engie are studying a possible share swap that could create a Franco-German giant in power grids, renewables and energy services with a market value of about 50 billion euros, report Arno Schuetze, Geert De Clercq ...
E.ON chief executive Johannes Teyssen plans a quick sale of the group's remaining stake in fossil fuel spin-off Uniper, Christoph Steitz and Tom Käckenhoff report for Reuters. Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting, Teyssen said the sale ...
More than 40 percent of work council representatives in the German wind power sector expect market conditions to deteriorate, trade union IG Metall Coast says in a press release. In a survey of wind power companies, around a quarter of respondents said ...
In an interview with Deutschlandfunk’s Jörg Münchenberg, Dieter Kempf, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), says reaching Germany’s 2020 target 18 months later would still be a very positive step. “I believe that the world can see very ...
Unlike many companies in the German automotive industry, component manufacturer Schaeffler regards the anticipated shift to e-mobility as a major growth opportunity rather than a threat, Henning Peitsmeier writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. ...
With projects officially defined as citizens’ energy again dominating the second onshore wind auction, the risk of not reaching the expansion targets after 2018 increases, writes the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) in a press release. “We see the ...
The manipulation of exhaust emissions values by German carmakers has cost the German state in excess of ten billion euros in lost tax revenue, the NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) says in a press release. “Many carmakers have misled their customers ...
Germany’s energy transition “is no energy transition” since the country continues to heavily rely on lignite power as its most important source of energy, Christian Schlesinger writes in the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche. If Germany wants to lower its ...
German offshore wind power costs are set to fall significantly, due to industrialisation of the sector, more efficient turbine construction, the switch from feed-in tariffs to auctions, and better coordination with grid operators, Olaf Preuß writes for ...
The operation of thousands of wind turbines could become economically unviable once the first support period for renewable energy in Germany runs out in 2020, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. If the operators’ sales revenue in open ...
The European Union, together with China, Canada “and other important partners” must take on a leadership role in international climate policy, after the US announced that it would pull out of the Paris Agreement, environment minister Barbara Hendricks ...
The German solar industry is confident that the country’s renewables expansion targets and the growing impact of energy storage solutions will boost the sector’s progress, Welt Online reports. Carsten Körnig, head of the German Solar Industry Association ...
Swedish utility Vattenfall will not sell its financially struggling Moorburg coal plant in Hamburg despite revamping its business model towards more renewable energy sources and digitalisation of the energy system, Björn Hartmann writes in Hambuger ...
Battery storage prices will not keep dropping at the same fast speed as in the last few years because further technological leaps could not be expected, Prof Uwe Sauer, of RWTH Aachen University, told renewables magazine EUWID Neue Energie. From a ...
The divergence between type-approval and real-world emission values cost Germany 1.2 billion euros in lost motor vehicle tax revenues in 2016, according to a report by the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament. This corresponds to 13 percent of the ...
German households consumed 2.1 percent more energy in 2015 than in the year before, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said in a press release. “The increase was observed for all energy sources except electricity,” it explained. Seventy ...
Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government was still committed to reaching the country’s 2020 target to reduce emissions by 40 percent despite greenhouse gas emissions in Germany having increased. Asked if she thinks the government would succeed, Merkel ...
In a draft for a call-to-vote, the Green Party writes that it is willing to negotiate with all parties except the AfD after the elections on 24 September, but “distances itself as far as possible from the FDP” (Free Democratic Party), writes Stefan Braun ...
Companies in Germany’s industrial powerhouse North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have called for the postponement of the grid fee reform, which the government plans to pass this week, the regional newspaper Rheinische Post reports. Some local branches of the ...
A majority of Uniper’s shareholders has rejected a takeover offer from Finnish utility Fortum, the German fossil fuel utility said in a press release today. Aside from the 46.65 percent share that major shareholder E.ON sold to Fortum, offers from the ...
Backtracking on the proposal to make public transport free of charge proves the government is “totally clueless and irresponsible”, according to German transport and environmental association Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD), which promotes sustainable ...
Welt Online / dpa East German state premier criticises power price differences Once again, an eastern German state premier has criticised regional discrepancies in the power price, dpa news agency reports in an article carried by Welt Online. Brandenburg ...
While the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia were largely decided on local factors, “in more ways than one this was a dry run for the general election,” writes Jeremy Cliffe in a blog article for The Economist. “Thrusting social reformism went up ...
While Daimler touts its shift to electric mobility at the IAA motor show in Frankfurt, the carmaker has made it clear to investors that the move will be a costly one, Susanne Preuss reports for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Daimler’s profits are ...
The Federation of German Industries (BDI) signalling a new stance on climate protection with its “Climate paths” study is a “breakthrough, more important […] than most governmental climate protection plans and targets,” writes Jakob Schlandt in an opinion ...
The Social Democrats (SPD) achieved a decisive victory in Sunday's Lower Saxony state election, but didn't garner enough votes to continue their government coalition with the Green Party, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) reports. With a ...
Renewable energies around the globe are growing at a rate “never thought possible by many some years ago” but Germany “is botching up” the technology and is haunted by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s continued failure in energy policy, former Green MP Hans ...
Six of the top ten industrial polluters regarding CO₂ emissions in the EU are German lignite-fired power plants, according to a European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing. Bełchatów in Poland was responsible for the highest amounts of CO₂. The EEA ...
Germany’s power industry will be able to supply the additional electricity needed for switching from combustion engine technology to e-mobility, according to a study conducted by Aurora Energy Research and reported by news agency Reuters. An anticipated ...
Blockchain data processing technology is constantly seeping into the business practices of “virtually every publicly-listed company” in Germany as it makes transactions more efficient and secure, Stefan Hajek writes in Handelsblatt Global Edition. The ...
Germany’s fossil fuel support policy makes the energy transition more expensive, shifts follow-up costs to taxpayers and costs the country 46 billion euros annually, according to a study by Green Budget Germany (FÖS) commissioned by Greenpeace. The ...
01 Aug 2017
Energy consumption in Germany increased 0.8 percent in the first half of 2017, compared to the same period in the previous year, due to positive economic development and slightly cooler weather at the beginning of the year, writes energy market research ...
22 Jun 2017
Germany’s chancellery chief Peter Altmaier has stressed the need to maintain caps on new offshore wind development in order to incentivize companies to lower the cost of the technology. Limits to the amount of new capacity in the tenders were necessary ...
A Düsseldorf court has dismissed a suit by lobby group Environmental Action Germany (DUH) seeking a ban of certain Volkswagen diesel cars from the city’s roads, Anneli Palmen reports for Reuters. DUH argued that Volkswagen diesel cars with emissions test ...
German power consumers might face a further rise of electricity costs caused by grid expansions required for e-mobility, according to a report by news agency dpa carried by the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Supplying e-car charging stations with electricity ...
The energy transition in Germany does not achieve most of its goals, and its progress has slowed down over the last few years, a study conducted by the consultancy Prognos and commissioned by the Bavarian Industry Association (vbw) has found. Improvements ...
Six years after Germany resumed plans for a quick nuclear exit, there is a still question over whether funds put aside by nuclear plant operators for a final nuclear waste repository will be sufficient, Bernd Freytag writes in an opinion piece for ...
In the run-up to the Frankfurt car show (IAA), premium carmaker BMW has updated its electric car plans with more all-electric models. “Let me make one thing very clear: in e-mobility, the BMW Group will also be the leading provider in the premium segment, ...
RWE’s CEO Rolf Martin Schmitz plans to reorganise the company’s senior management, writes Jürgen Flauger in Handelsblatt, citing company sources. Subsidiaries RWE Power – responsible for lignite and nuclear power – and RWE Generation, which deals with gas ...
Germany’s offshore wind power production in the North Sea in 2017 was 47 percent higher than in 2016, writes grid operator TenneT in a press release. With a record of 15.97 terawatt hours (TWh), North Sea wind made up a total of 15.9 percent of all German ...
The French government’s order to decommission the contested nuclear reactor Fessenheim can’t make up for the fact that President Francois Hollande hasn’t pursued a French “Energiewende” due to resistance from the nuclear lobby, Leo Klimm writes in a ...
The Energiewende, Germany’s energy transition, will stay at the top of the agenda for the next government after September’s federal elections, Peter Altmaier, head of the Federal Chancellery, said at utility association BDEW’s Smart Renewables event. An ...
German manufacturing businesses have reduced their energy use in line with government efficiency targets, the Federal Ministry of Finance says. A monitoring report by RWI- Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research found that companies consumed ...
Successful citizens’ energy projects in Germany’s first onshore wind power auction still have to prove that they can live up to their name, Bernward Janzing writes in the Tageszeitung (taz). While 93 percent of successful bidders in the auction were ...
The high number of citizens’ energy projects among successful bids in the second round of wind power auctions- which can be attributed to a single project developer, UKA – has led to renewed criticism of the current auction regulations, writes Jörg Staude ...
20 Jun 2017, 00:00 NGOs from all over the world have called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fight for a strong stance on climate at the G20 summit in little more than two weeks. Merkel said the US decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement “broke ...
The European Commission has granted Germany and several other countries a “very last deadline” to propose concrete measures on how they intend to comply with air quality standards, report Till Hoppe and Silke Kersting in the Handelsblatt. After what ...
The federal environment ministry supports a project that aims to create and develop new possibilities and offers for climate-friendly mobility in residential environments. These could include car sharing stations and safe parking for bicycles and ...
The Christian Democrats’ (CDU) win in the Schleswig-Holstein state election is "a black eye" for Social Democrats (SPD) and their federal frontrunner Martin Schulz ahead of September federal elections, writes Politico.eu. Results in the last ...
A decline in earnings in the Retail UK segment weighs heavily on German renewable energy company and RWE carve-out innogy, writes Jürgen Flauger in Handelsblatt. This was due to “fierce competition and tough regulation”, writes Flauger. For the first half ...
The use of batteries to level out intermittent solar and wind generation in the Tennet and Sonnen project shows that “the Energiewende is making progress,” writes Andreas Mihm in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “New offshore wind parks have been approved ...
German utility RWE would be “merely a sort of ‘bad bank’ of the energy business” without the 75 percent share in its renewable spin-off innogy, and RWE's problems are self-inflicted, writes Andreas Becker in an opinion piece for Deutsche Welle. “The ...
Germany could become the number one incubator for cleantech startups, Marius Buchmann writes on his energy business blog, enerquire. He cites three factors: Large German utilities have changed strategy over the past two years and are now investing heavily ...
The diesel scandal is only the tip of the iceberg of the German car industry’s troubles and neither the manufacturers’ CEOs nor Chancellor Angela Merkel have grasped the gravity of the crisis, writes Heribert Prantl in an opinion piece in Süddeutsche ...
The construction of the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 from Russia to Germany – scheduled to start this year – could be put back by months or years. The delay could be caused by plans by the EU Commission to negotiate a separate regulatory framework ...
Challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent promise that Germany will find ways to meet its 2020 climate targets, nine analysts and researchers contacted by Bloomberg have said that the country will probably fail in its efforts, report Mathew Carr, ...
Germany might need new gas power plants to balance out the fluctuating feed-in by renewables, Uniper CEO Klaus Schäfer tells Rheinische Post in an interview. “The question of supply security is going to resurface, at the latest when the last nuclear ...
At first glance, the split of German utility RWE was done in a smarter way than that of E.ON, as RWE spin-off innogy just posted a net profit and plans to pay shareholders a dividend, writes Jürgen Flauger in an opinion piece for Handelsblatt. “Yet it ...
05 Jul 2017, 00:00 The pressure on Germany to take global leadership on climate action has been constantly mounting since US President Donald Trump decided to take the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg ...
The strong showing by the Christian (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) in the state election in North Rhine-Westphalia shows that voters have put more emphasis on economic policy and wealth, writes Heike Göbel in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Germany needs a four-pronged strategy to get its Energiewende on track to meet emissions and renewables targets, writes Felix Matthes, head of the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut), in an opinion piece for weekly newspaper Die Zeit. The country ...
Hamburg-based wind turbine manufacturer Senvion and German utility EnBW concluded a cooperation agreement for onshore projects totalling several hundred megawatts (MW) throughout Germany, Senvion announced in a press release. Find the press release in ...
Religious groups and organisations are becoming increasingly influential in international climate policy, according to research presented at the University of Münster (WWU). “They have established themselves as non-governmental actors at the UN climate ...
Five major companies from Germany are among the world’s 35 most active anti-climate policy lobbying enterprises, British think tank InfluenceMap says. In a study that examines the companies most influential in shaping climate and energy policy around the ...
An average successful bid of less than half a cent per kilowatt hour for offshore wind in Germany’s first competitive auction for the technology showed that renewables support did not need to be as big as it has been in recent years, writes Timot Szent ...
The collapse of the German solar PV modules industry and declining job numbers in the renewables sector as a whole show the difficulties in weaning a sector off financial support, writes Christoph Eisenring in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. This invalidated “the ...
Many operators of nuclear, gas or coal-fired power plants in Germany do not throttle feed-in at times of “ negative power prices,” the Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA) has said in a press release. Although operators of conventional plants have to pay for ...
Germany’s failure to resolve national alignment of power grid fees is down to politicians stalling in order to appease voters in the country’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Former ...
As German carmakers are increasingly under pressure to shift from their flagship diesel engines to electro mobility, China has pulled well ahead of Europe and the United States, Dave Keating writes for Deutsche Welle. China rapidly introduced charging ...
The federal cabinet’s approval of a bill for supporting tenant electricity models in Germany will “make tenants directly participate at energy transition”, economy minister Brigitte Zypries said in a press release by the Federal Ministry for Economic ...
Germany’s government takes on a leadership role in international climate protection – a role fostered by the fact that the German population has overwhelmingly supported the transition to a greener economy, writes Ruby Russell in an article for ...
France and Germany have agreed to hold joint auctions for renewable energies, the German ministry for the economy and energy (BMWi) said in a press release. The two countries also agreed to set up a cross-border experiment dubbed “Smart Border Initiative” ...
Ill-advised legislation and an alienation of citizens from renewable investments put the success of Germany’s energy transition in jeopardy, Hans-Josef Fell writes for EurActiv. The country continued to be internationally celebrated for its Energiewende, ...
Germany’s power labelling regulation allows electricity suppliers to declare a higher than real share of renewables in their customers’ power mix, which amounts to “greenwashing by law,” writes Jörg Staude for klimaretter.info, based on data from green ...
The average support rate for all successful bidders in Germany’s second onshore wind power auction was 4.28 eurocent per kilowatt hour (ct/kWh). “The average support rate decreased by more than a cent per kilowatt hour, compared to the first round,” said ...
Germany’s “headline success story” on climate protection has “a dark underside that is usually overlooked in all the fanfare,” Paul Hockenos writes for CNN Online. The country’s greenhouse gas emissions have “stagnated at about 900 million tonnes” of CO₂ ...
BMW head Harald Krüger has rejected VW CEO Matthias Müller’s call to end the privileged tax treatment of diesel cars, reports Handelsblatt. “I think abandoning the diesel subsidies is wrong. This is not justifiable for the customers that have bought a ...
Der Spiegel has published a long article by Benedikt Becker, Frank Dohmen, Gerald Traufetter, and Steffen Winter on Germany’s difficulties in phasing out power production from lignite. The article is the translated version of a German original, which was ...
German carmaker Daimler was the first of the five major companies accused of forming a cartel to voluntarily disclose their activities to the authorities- anticipating a similar move by competitor and alleged accomplice VW, Thomas Fromm, Georg Mascolo and ...
The oppositional Social Democrats (SPD) in North Rhine-Westphalia say that the restrictive wind power policy of the new CDU-FDP government coalition endangers 18,000 jobs in the state, reports news agency dpa in an article carried by Aachener Zeitung. The ...
Climate change is largely kept out of the election campaign in Germany for allegedly being too abstract and distant, but that is a flawed notion and points at a grave failure of both the media and politics, Maximilian Probst and Daniel Pelletier write in ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not want to be US President Donald Trump’s opponent, but she is, writes Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “This could pay off in terms of domestic politics,” as other ...
Germany’s IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG BCE) trade union, which covers workers in the mining, chemicals and energy sectors, has welcomed the move by likely coalition partners CDU/CSU and SPD to give up on 2020 climate protection targets, Detlef ...
For the upcoming coalition talks in Germany's northernmost state Schleswig-Holstein, policy positions by the Green Party and the Free Democrats (FDP) differ most when it comes to the power sector, said regional FPD leader Wolfgang Kubicki in a joint ...
The governments of France and Germany intend to reinforce European carbon trading in the electricity sector and aim to initiate a reform of the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) before the UN’s COP 23 in November, news agency Reuters reports. Brune ...
As ambassadors of the EU member states gave their support to a draft regulation that sets out binding emissions reduction targets in non-ETS (EU Emissions Trading System) sectors, German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said in a press release that ...
A deal to split German renewables company innogy and exchange large parts of their assets will help both E.ON and RWE better contribute to the success of energy transition, the companies said at a joint press conference. “With this realignment, we are ...
The Unesco Heritage Committee wants plans for a wind farm near Lorch in the protected Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site to be abandoned, Barbara Dietel writes in Wiesbadener Tagblatt. The Committee said the planned 212-metre high windmills violated Unesco ...
The federal economy ministry’s proposed new strategy “Energy efficiency and heat from renewable energies” could endanger Germany’s climate goals as it hindered house owners from installing modern fossil fuel-based heating systems, say conservative ...
The conservative alliance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU has pledged to stick to the country’s national climate targets, including the long fought-over Climate Action Plan 2050. The two parties’ joint programme ...
Chemist Robert Schlögl, from Germany’s Max-Planck-Research-Institute, wants to save combustion engine technology and its infrastructure from being gradually replaced with electric vehicles by developing synthetic fuel from hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO ...
The federal state of Saxony wants to change the law in order to exclude itself from the search for a final nuclear waste repository in Germany, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Saxony wants to exclude granite from the rock varieties ...
The federal government and Germany’s four nuclear power station operators have agreed on contract details for last year’s agreement on financing the nuclear clean-up, report Helmut Bünder and Manfred Schäfers for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The ...
The state government of Baden-Wurttemberg wants to introduce selective inner city driving bans for older diesel cars if plans for a nationwide ‘blue badge’ are not realised, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). A cabinet decision draft by the ...
German carmaker Daimler is accused of having sold more than one million cars with excess emissions for almost a decade, according to a recent search warrant, reports Süddeutsche Zeitung. The company might have used defeat devices in certain motor models ...
The conservative alliance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU has pledged to stick to the country’s national climate targets, including the long fought-over Climate Action Plan 2050. The two parties’ joint programme ...
After the US decision to leave the Paris Agreement, the German government will work on uniting all remaining G20 members in climate protection efforts in the run-up to the summit in July, said government spokesperson Steffen Seibert at a press conference ...
“Some climate protection advocates rhetorically resemble religious fanatics,” Michael Fabricius writes in a commentary for Die Welt Online. If two major energy agencies demand a sevenfold increase in CO 2-emissions reduction “without explaining how that ...
Insurance protection for nuclear power plants in Germany’s neighbouring countries is insufficient for covering the costs of a major nuclear disaster, environmental organisation Greenpeace Energy has said in a press release. “Under prevailing legal norms, ...
Germany’s parliament decided on allowing tenants to benefit from solar power panels installed on their buildings a few weeks ago and now renters seizing this opportunity say they were able to reduce their power bill with it, news agency dpa reports in an ...
The draft of a coalition treaty agreed by Germany’s negotiating parties suggests that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) have found common ground on energy and climate policy, mirroring several aspects ...
A basic principle of international law says that “agreements must be kept,” Stefan Kornelius writes in a commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung. By publicly pondering whether to pull his country out of the Paris Climate Agreement, US President Donald Trump ...
The German Federal Court of Auditors’ criticism of how the economy ministry has managed the costs of the Energiewende is an embarrassment for minister Sigmar Gabriel, Thorsten Knuf writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Rundschau. “No idea of the actual ...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel want to intensify bilateral cooperation on climate and environmental protection, the German government said in a press release. The Indo-German alliance for climate protection and ...
House owners in Germany are not improving their properties to more energy efficient standards fast enough for the country to meet its efficiency targets, German Energy Agency Dena said in a release. “Our figures show: An acceleration of energy efficiency ...
The decision by logistics company Deutsche Post DHL to double production of its self-developed electric van is an embarrassment for established truckmakers, according to an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The industry believed for a long ...
A German CO 2 tax in combination with a European carbon floor price would be a very effective means to protect the climate, according to a study by consultancy Energy Brainpool commissioned by the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE). This model would ...
Forty-one percent of German drivers say they plan on buying a new or used vehicle in the coming 18 months, according to a study conducted by fuel and petrol station brand Aral AG. This rate is the highest since the first such study in 2003. Most survey ...
Storing heat underground offers the possibility to replace fossil-powered heating plants, according to a press release by Kiel University on this week’s national symposium on the technology. The potential for underground storage should be used to solve ...
Strong heating demand caused by low temperatures halved the filling level of German gas holders to 36 percent within eight weeks, reports Andreas Mihm for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Uniper, the fossil spin-off from utility E.ON, warns a long winter ...
“Citizens' energy is the big winner” of Germany’s first round of onshore wind power auctions, said Rainer Baake, state secretary in the economy ministry (BMWi), in a press release on the results. 93 percent of all successful bids for the auctioned ...
German engineering heavyweight Bosch is going to bridle at the impending driving ban for cars with diesel engines in its hometown Stuttgart, Susanne Preuss and Carsten Knop write in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner argues the path ...
Environmental protection and conservativism are two defining traits of German society but a corresponding political coalition of the Green Party and the CDU seems as distant as always days before this week’s parliamentary election, Fabian Federl writes on ...
The tough times Germany’s utilities have gone through as a result of the energy transition are coming to an end, with investor confidence in takeovers and rising power prices pushing stocks up, Susanne Schier writes for Handelsblatt. “The Fukushima ...
German utility RWE has reorganised its power generation business by spinning off its lignite and nuclear power operations into a separate company, the company says in a press release. The move was intended to “make our electricity generation companies ...
Germany’s domestic transport market is set to change substantially in 2018 as bus companies, railway services, and airlines seek to woo people away from using passenger cars, Timo Kotowski writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. About 80 percent of ...
The director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), Ottmar Edenhofer, criticises the Christian church’s lack of commitment against climate change in an interview with Bernhard Pötter for tageszeitung (taz). “It’s ...
Low-income households pay more for electricity levies and taxes which help finance the Energiewende than high-income households – relative to their income, says economic research institute RWI Essen in a new paper. But most people wish that wealthier ...
The provision in Germany’s coalition agreement that the country will source 65 percent of its power consumption from renewables by 2030 is likely to make power prices “more volatile and lower” than previously thought, Aurora Energy Research says in an ...
The United States’ delegation successfully pushed for significant changes to the G20 climate and energy action plan draft during working group negotiations, reports Arthur Neslen for Climate Home. The latest draft of the plan, which was initiated by the ...
German utility EnBW reported a 10.9 percent increase in its first-half core profit, citing refunds of a nuclear fuel tax, consolidation of a majority in gas supplier VNG in April 2016, and the sale of an offshore wind park stake, reports Reuters. EnBW is ...
A comparison of German states reveals that Baden-Württemberg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria are Germany’s renewables leaders, according to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). Hesse, Berlin and the Saarland were ranked the lowest ...
10 Jan 2018
Speaking to Die Welt, Claudia Kemfert, climate policy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research, says the prospective coalition partners’ giving up on “their own climate targets” is a “declaration of bankruptcy”. This not only damages ...
German fishermen want to be allowed to fish between offshore wind turbines in the North Sea but operators are worried about insufficient insurance cover in case of damage to their installations, Birger Nicolai and Daniel Wetzel write on Welt Online. ...
Vattenfall plans to cut up to 60 percent of its 420 full-time employees working in its German hydro power division, the company announced in a press release. “Due to the price development on the German electricity market and the regulatory framework for ...
Brigitte Zypries, Germany’s new economy minister, has assured the country’s renewables industry of pursuing a progressive policy approach to advance the energy transition. At a conference by the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) she pledged to ...
Concerns over global warming are more and more pressing, yet the German party that addresses them most consistently struggle to maintain a solid voter base, Matthias Geis writes in weekly newspaper Die Zeit. Not only did the Green Party fail to enter the ...
The German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) has criticised the European Parliament’s propositions for a reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) for being “an empty shell” that cements the system’s status as “an ineffective instrument for ...
Man-made climate change negatively impacts species in freshwater systems through rising CO₂ levels, write researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in an article in Current Biology. While ocean acidification is often called “climate change’s equally ...
Helmar Rendez, head of Lusatian energy company Leag, is opposed to phasing out lignite-fired power production to protect the climate, Jens Tartler writes in Der Tagesspiegel. “We need to let go of the illusion that Lusatia can save the world’s climate ...
A boat lift near Hamburg could be extended to become a pumped storage facility, Hamburger Abendblatt reports. In times of excess wind power production, water could be pumped to the upper part of the Elbe Lateral Canal, and drained through electricity ...
08 Jul 2017, 00:00 Nineteen members of the G20 group of leading industrialised and emerging economies underscored their commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, leaving the United States isolated. The US also was the only country to opt-out of a first ...
Production of natural gas is declining in Germany, and as corporate demand for an increase is becoming more marked, environmentalists fear fracking could become an accepted alternative, Thomas Strünkelnberg writes in Die Welt. Such fears persist despite ...
The price for emitting one tonne of CO 2 under the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) has been frozen at five euros for years because “the EU reaches its climate targets either way”, Hendrik Kafsack writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Land use, land-use change and forestry in Germany absorbed fewer emissions in 2015 than in 2010. Net emissions were roughly minus 14.6 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalents in 2015, compared to minus 16.4 million tonnes in 2010, according to Federal ...
The economy minister of German federal state Brandenburg has called a speedy phase-out of coal-fired power production “utopian”, Märkische Allgemeine reports. SPD-politician Albrecht Gerber said while restructuring the energy system in the long-term was a ...
The mining and lignite coal company Leag has said it wants to get into the battery storage business in 2018, a new business area for the company, according to an article on the website Die Welt/N24. The goal is to improve the network that manages supply ...
Business federations have welcomed former justice minister Brigitte Zypries as the successor of Sigmar Gabriel for heading Germany’s economy ministry, Heike Jahberg and Kevin P. Hoffmann write in Tagesspiegel. “Industry expects a smooth transition in the ...
The dispute about the decision to split the German-Austrian common power price zone shows the difficulties of designing a common EU energy market in light of missing grid infrastructure, writes Paul Hodgson for EurActiv. Trans-border power trade, as well ...
Peter Teffer writes in an article for EU Observer about the challenges ahead for Germany to reach its climate targets, such as a coal phase-out- which is likely to be discussed after the federal elections in autumn. Read the article in English here. For ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s advice for other countries to invest now in climate friendly technologies proves a “boomerang“, because her own government has too often been content with the status quo, writes Michael Bauchmüller in an opinion piece for ...
The current mood in Germany’s wind power industry is “ miserable,” but just like the solar power industry before, the companies are victims of a crisis of their own making, Franz Hubik writes in an opinion piece for Handelsblatt Online. Annual wind power ...
The new government coalition of CDU, Greens and FDP in Germany’s northern wind-power state Schleswig-Holstein means many wind power projects will need re-examining, Schleswig-Holsteinische Landeszeitung reports. The federal state’s interior ministry was ...
Chinese grid company SGCC’s plan to acquire 20 percent share in Germany’s transmission grid operator 50Hertz worries German politicians and could refuel the debate on establishing a state-run transmission grid company, reports the Handelsblatt. It was a ...
After the sudden departure of CEO Peter Terium, German utility innogy is “reviewing discretionary spending across all segments”, the company says in a press release. The spin-off of energy company RWE says it “reiterates its financial discipline targets”, ...
Germany’s soaring grid costs and negative power prices will likely be tackled during the talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) on renewing their grand coalition, reports Klaus Stratmann in Handelsblatt. “We ...
Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have vowed to work together closely at the upcoming G20 summit in Hamburg to further shared goals and overcome diplomatic difficulties with third countries. During a visit in Berlin, Xi said ...
The Meat Atlas 2018, published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, NGO Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) and Le Monde Diplomatique, offers a damning look at industrial meat production and highlights, among other things, the danger it poses to the climate. ...
Further development of the German energy transition depends on the participation of citizens, writes Joachim Wille in Frankfurter Rundschau. While there is generally big support for the Energiewende among the population, more detailed surveys showed that ...
Trends such as the digitalisation of the energy transition and autonomous driving pushed German electrical and electronics companies’ sales up around 4 percent to a record 190 billion euros last year, according to the German Electrical and Electronic ...
Southern German company Heindl Energy proposes to overcome one of the energy transition’s central challenges – how to store renewable electricity on a large scale – with a pumped hydro system that does not require mountains, reports Ralph Diermann for ...
Germany’s 2020 climate protection target is likely to fail due to the country’s “ addiction to coal ”, according to an analysis by British climate NGO Sandbag. Sandbag argues that Germany’s vast electricity exports allowed for a reduction of its coal ...
France, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany announced at the One Planet Summit in Paris on Tuesday that they would “examine or introduce” an effective CO 2 price in "relevant sectors," according to a press release from the German ...
The proposal for a G20 energy and climate action plan, prepared for the summit in Hamburg on 7 and 8 July, remains vague and lacks ambition- and might yet be stopped completely by the United States, the tageszeitung (taz) newspaper writes. The 13-page ...
Energy expert Jeffrey Michel provides an overview of lignite use in Germany in an article for energy post. Among other things, he suggests divestment strategies could have minimal or negative effects on German lignite policy, jobs, structural change and ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel tries to be factual and content-focussed in her clear criticism of US President Donald Trump’s policies but she is unlikely to be successful in light of the “cacophony of interests” at the G20 summit, writes Stefan ...
German battery maker sonnen GmbH aims to push the country’s traditional energy giants out of the market with flat-rate contracts for electricity provided by a network of battery storage and green power facilities, Franz Hubik writes for Handelsblatt. “The ...
385 primary power providers have increased their prices since the beginning of the year or announced price hikes within three months, the price comparison website check24 has said in a press release. For standard households with an annual consumption of 5 ...
The simple reason why e-car sales languish in Germany, while e-bicycle sales “go through the roof” is that e-cars do not offer users any advantages over conventional cars, writes researcher Tobias Männel in a blog post for the Fraunhofer Institute for ...
Peter Terium, CEO of German utility innogy, has left the RWE renewables spin-off days after the company said it will make less profit than anticipated this year and next, which had resulted in a considerable drop in share prices in the second week of ...
The EU agency Fusion for Energy (F4E) has rejected calls by German MPs to cut funding for the fusion reactor ITER and use the money for research on conventional energy transition technologies instead, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. “We Europeans ...
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) today started Germany’s second onshore wind power auction, the agency announced in a press release. With 1,000 megawatt (MW), the tender volume is 200 MW higher than the first tender. Deadline for bids is 1 August 2017 ...
Andreas Pinkwart, Free Democratic (FDP) state energy minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, welcomed several energy and climate provisions of the draft coalition treaty between the conservatives (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD). Admitting that the ...
Managing Germany’s power grids is becoming increasingly expensive, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt. There has been a “massive increase” in so-called “re-dispatch” measures, where power plants are started or shut down to keep the grid stable, ...
The huge gas turbines Siemens makes are models destined for phase-out, writes Markus Balser in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Electricity is no longer produced in a few large power plants, but in many places. An ever-increasing number of households are turning ...
Germany will need an “efficiency revolution” to reach its target of halving energy consumption by 2050, according to energy state secretary Rainer Baake. At a conference by the German Industry Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF) in Berlin, Baake ...
There will be no need to extend Germany’s open pit lignite mines if the country sticks to its climate protection targets, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) writes in a press release. Lignite reserves in already-approved mines were ...
Germany climbed one rank and is in fourth place on business consultancy Ernst & Young’s (EY) Renewable energy country attractiveness index (recai), trailing China, India and the United States. EY ranks 40 countries on their attractiveness for ...
In a parliamentary inquiry, the Left Party asks the federal government for information on its contact with fossil and renewable energy interest groups. The party is worried that the voices of representatives of the fossil sector were heard more, which ...
Last year’s increase in CO 2 emissions makes it increasingly unlikely that Germany will reach its 2020 climate target, according to a short analysis by Arepo Consult for the Green Party. Emissions would have to drop by 40 million tonnes per year until ...
The dwindling profitability of coal power plants brings financial difficulties for many municipalities in Germany’s most populated region, the Ruhr area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Guido M. Hartmann writes in Welt am Sonntag. Municipal utilities from ...
Resilience strategies for energy systems could help better compensate or prevent blackouts, German National Academy for Science and Engineering (acatech), Leopoldina and Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities said in a joint paper. The ...
Peugeot maker PSA Group, which paid General Motors 1.3 billion euros for German subsidiary Opel, now wants about half of the money back after discovering that Opel is set to miss EU CO 2 emissions targets by a wide margin, sources told Reuters. The French ...
Germans like to think their country is a climate protection pioneer, but other countries like China and France have more clearly understood what the Paris Agreement means for the economy, and have taken the bull by the horns, writes Carola von Schmettow, ...
The German news website Spiegel Online has published an interactive map showing the results of research conducted by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, and the Austrian Institute for Ecology into fallout from possible nuclear ...
German utility E.ON’s first-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of just over 1 billion euros was around 34 percent below the previous-year figure, in line with the company’s expectations, the company has said in a press release. This was ...
The emissions fraud scandal by Volkswagen now has fully engulfed the German carmaker’s subsidiary Audi, Hans Leyendecker, Georg Mascolo, Klaus Ott and Nicolas Richter write for Süddeutsche Zeitung International. Police officers and prosecutors on ...
German households’ energy consumption for heating has remained almost unchanged in recent years, Ralph Diermann writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. According to data by gas meter reader Techem on gas, oil and district heating demand from 1.5 million ...
Sigmar Gabriel’s aim to create a good reputation for his party in the fields of economy and energy as Germany’s federal minister has failed, writes Heike Göbel in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “He didn’t really show any deep ...
German energy bourse EEX has partnered with several Chinese exchanges to get a foothold in China’s emerging national emissions trading scheme, Kathy Chen and Mike Szabo report for Carbon Pulse. The group is advancing plans to offer trade in euro ...
German car manufacturer Daimler will start selling electric versions of its transporter Mercedes “Vito” in 2018, Handelsblatt reports. The van is Mercedes’ answer to the Deutsche Post’s newly developed electric Streetscooter. It will have a range of 150 ...
23 May 2017, 00:00 Days before the G7 summit in Italy, foreign governments praised German Chancellor Merkel for her international leadership on climate and urged her to sway US President Donald Trump to keep the United States in the Paris Agreement. " ...
Bosch, the world’s largest auto parts supplier, has rejected a suggestion by Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller that diesel tax incentives could be cut to subsidise green mobility. Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner told the business daily Handelsblatt that this would ...
The energy transition will mainly play out in power grids in the years to come, according to E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen. In an interview with the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche, he said grids were his company’s most important business, which also ...
A new government is unlikely to be formed in Germany before spring 2018, Olaf Scholz, deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. Scholz, who also is mayor of Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, said ...
German carmaker Daimler has agreed to make a “significant” investment in the production of electric vehicles in China, news agency Reuters reports. Together with its long-term partner company BAIC, the German luxury car brand has made “ an important first ...
Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler is accelerating its electric car programme, after it failed to cut fleet emissions in Europe for the first time since 2007 last year, Ilona Wissenbach and Edward Taylor report for Reuters. “In the coming years, the company will ...
After the G20 summit in Hamburg, the governments of France and Germany should use the joint Ministerial Council meeting in Paris to establish the two countries as the “ energy transition motor of the European Union ”, writes Andreas Kuhlmann, chief ...
More and more carmakers are starting to offer power storage for domestic use in order to have a new source of revenue in times of uncertain e-car sales, Süddeutsche Zeitung writes. In addition to US manufacturer Tesla and Japanese competitor Nissan, ...
Solarworld still is Germany’s largest producer of PV and other solar installations, but its outlook is becoming more and more grim, Hannes Koch writes in Hamburger Abendblatt. Last week, the company announced a loss “equalling half of our capital stock.” ...
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) garnered another election victory and beat the governing Social Democrats (SPD) in their “heartland”, Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Preliminary results show that the CDU ...
The EU’s plan to allow fuel from felled trees to qualify as renewable energy could accelerate climate change, writes Felix Creutzig of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in a guest commentary in the Süddeutsche ...
Deutsche Bank will no longer grant new financing for thermal coal mining or new coal-fired power plants, Germany’s largest bank said in a press release. The bank will also “reduce its existing exposure to the thermal coal mining sector,” it said. Deutsche ...
Charges that wind and solar power cause large “hidden” emissions are false, because emissions remain low even when the energy needed to build them is taken into account, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “A ...
Germany’s governing conservative parties CDU and CSU risk undermining one of the country’s key climate protection targets by postponing the adoption of a planned law on energy efficiency in public buildings, Jens Tartler writes in Der Tagesspiegel. ...
A large majority of Germans (82 percent) believe that the Energiewende is an important project which they personally consider the right thing, but many think that costs are too high, according to a survey by research company GfK, commissioned by natural ...
German-Spanish wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa reported an increase in orders of 29 percent in the final three months of 2017 compared to a year earlier, driven by strong demand from the United States, Denmark, Thailand and Egypt. News agency Reuters ...
Heating systems in Germany will have to change substantially by 2030 if the country is to reach its climate targets for 2050, according to a study commissioned by energy think-tank Agora Energiewende*. While the share of natural gas used for heating will ...
China has moved into pole position in management consultancy Roland Berger’s international e-mobility ranking for the first time. Whereas Chinese e-car sales doubled last year, the German market remains sluggish, potentially causing German carmakers to ...
Regulatory hurdles hamper flexible energy storage systems from contributing to their full potential to the success of Germany’s energy transition, Stefan Kapferer, head of utilities lobby BDEW, said in a press release. “It’s time energy storages received ...
Paying extra for “green power” might help consumers' conscience but does little to advance energy transition, Jürgen Flauger writes on Handelsblatt Online. “The Energiewende’s success is determined in energy generation,” Flauger explains. Green ...
Six years before Germany's last nuclear plant is due to go offline, the utilities’ lawsuits over the legality and costs of the phase-out procedure pose a final but major obstacle for the nuclear exit, writes Michael Bauchmüller in Süddeutsche Zeitung ...
A large-scale transition to e-cars could shift the power balance between German carmakers and their suppliers in favour of car component producers like Bosch, ZF or Continental, Martin-Werner Buchenau writes in Handelsblatt. The engines have always been ...
Considerations within Germany’s governing conservative party CDU to transfer 152 containers with radioactive fuel elements from a research reactor to the US could deal a blow to the country’s search for a final repository for its nuclear waste, Michael ...
Google plans to send a group of managers to the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein to assess the conditions for building a computing centre powered by wind energy, Kieler Nachrichten reports. “It is well known that Google is looking for new ...
A coalition of German NGOs has called on the SPD’s frontrunner for this year’s federal election to explicitly endorse Germany’s climate protection targets, the environmental organisation WWF has said in a press release. The NGOs say the decision by the ...
The T20 group of international think tanks are hoping for “G17, G18, G19” solution on the disputed issue of climate protection, where “we know that some of us are moving in the wrong direction”, but the rest grew closer together in their push forward, ...
Hannelore Kraft, premier and social democratic frontrunner in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), has criticised German chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to energy policy, Kristian Frigelj writes in Die Welt. Kraft said she and ...
Electricity in rural areas costs on average 2 percent more than in German cities, writes price comparison website verivox in a press release. Households consuming 4,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year on average paid 1,138 euros in rural areas, while the ...
The pivotal mistake by the auto industry was not diesel technology itself, but holding on to it for too long, writes Grischa Brower-Rabinowitsch in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt. German carmakers had not focused on new propulsion technologies early ...
Germany needs to demonstrate that “climate protection and economic success are not mutually exclusive,” social democratic Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag. According to a Spiegel Online article citing the interview, ...
A draft of conclusions to the G20 summit in Hamburg contains a compromise on climate protection between the US and other member states, news agency Reuters reports. The document, dated 3 July, acknowledged Washington’s “isolation in opposing the Paris ...
Two powerful autumn storms pushed German renewable electricity production to a record high this year, according to calculations by utility E.ON. E.ON manager Robert Hienz told news agency dpa that from January to mid-November, solar, wind and hydro power ...
German utility RWE has contested a court’s evidence order from November 2017 which says that a consultant shall assess whether greenhouse gas emissions caused by the country’s largest coal user have contributed to the melting of a glacier in Peru, which ...
Economy minister Brigitte Zypries cautioned her Social Democrat colleague, environment minister Barbara Hendricks, not to agree to “unreflected compromises” in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) reform negotiations, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Electric cars will one day dominate Germany’s roads, but in the meantime cars with fuel cells that generate power from hydrogen could contribute to the country’s transition in transportation, Lukas Weber writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's ...
In an opinion piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Michael Bauchmüller asks if Chancellor Angela Merkel can be trusted, after the parties in exploratory talks to form a new grand coalition government dropped Germany’s 2020 climate target. The outgoing coalition ...
Deutsche Post DHL will double production capacity for its self-developed electric van, and start Streetscooter sales to third parties due to strong demand. The logistics company said in a press release it will commission another production location to ...
Chancellor Angel Merkel appears to have signalled the end of brown coal in Germany, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. In her traditional summer interview with broadcaster ARD, Merkel stated that working with affected regions to develop ...
An EU parliament committee has voted in favour of a mandatory public housing modernisation quota to improve energy efficiency, but such a move would hurt Germany’s poor, writes Michael Fabricius in a commentary in Die Welt. Germany’s strict regulations ...
The right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is becoming an outlet for the anger of former lignite workers that lost their jobs when East German power plants and open-pit mines were shut down after German reunification in 1990, writes Stefan Locke ...
The EU General Court's approval of anti-dumping measures for imports of solar panels from China is a pyrrhic victory for Europeans, because the duties simply increase consumer prices, writes Michael Bauchmüller in an opinion piece for Süddeutsche ...
Renewable energy employed about 334,000 people in Germany in 2016, making the country the European leader, according to the report “Renewable Energy and Jobs – Annual Review 2017” by International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). China, Brazil, the United ...
Germany and the rest of Europe should redouble their efforts to fight climate change after the United States’ decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the annual meeting of the Christian Democratic Union group in ...
Germany invested 14.6 billion US dollars in clean energy in 2017, a decrease of 26 percent compared to the previous year, and the lowest since 2004, says Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) in its 2017 report on global investment in renewable energies. ...
Social Democrat (SPD) and former federal Minister of Justice Brigitte Zypries was chosen by her party’s leadership to replace Sigmar Gabriel as economy and energy minister, writes Reuters. Zypries is currently Parliamentary State Secretary in Gabriel’s ...
The large-scale cultivation of energy crops has been a political “mistake” and “in part a wrong track of the Energiewende”, Germany’s environment minister Barbara Hendricks said in Handelsblatt. She calls for a reduction of the production of plants used ...
The new governing coalition of conservative CDU and economic liberal FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is set to undermine the country’s climate protection goals, environmental organisation WWF says in a press release. The CDU-FDP coalition agreement ...
The German environment ministry (BMUB) published a fact-check of US President Donald Trump’s announcement speech to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. To Trump’s statement that the accord was a “deal that punishes the United States”, BMUB replies: ...
An initiative by Germany’s right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to increase the minimum distance between two wind farms failed to find a majority in the state’s parliament, news agency dpa ...
The share of renewables in Germany’s gross final energy consumption has increased from 3.7 percent in 2000 to 14.6 percent in 2016, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) announced. Most of this (7.2 percentage points) was achieved through renewable ...
The Grenfell Tower fire that killed at least 79 people in London last summer has led to scepticism of the insulation industry and made it more difficult to achieve the German energy transition goal of greater efficiency in the heating sector, Mechtild ...
Germany’s environment ministry has launched the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) to strengthen internal European cooperation on climate protection, the ministry announced in a press release. The initiative will initially supply funding for 22 projects ...
The federal German government is blocking tighter controls of the auto industry in Europe, report Markus Balser and Michael Bauchmüller in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The EU Commission is currently working on an emissions testing overhaul that would allow closer ...
Berlin will end coal-fired energy generation by 2030, the city's government, the Senat, said in a press release. The city will stop using lignite by the end of 2017. A corresponding draft law will now be introduced in the city’s parliament. Berlin ...
German energy companies are calling for a re-evaluation of how Germany finances green energy to cope with the problem of rising costs, write Dana Heide, Franz Hubik and Jürgen Flauger for Handelsblatt Global Edition. “We need a fundamental reform of ...
30 Nov 2017, 00:00 During its G20 presidency this year, Germany made the issue of climate change and energy transition a central topic- and its G20 presidency successor Argentina is ready to carry it forward to the 2018 summit in Buenos Aires, according ...
Germany and Poland are crucial for filling the EU energy union with substance, but controversies over differing interests have stalled progress in energy policy cooperation, according to a paper from the German Institute for International and Security ...
Germany’s consumption of natural gas continued to rise in the first half of 2017, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) says in a press release. Since January, Germans burned the equivalent of 516 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of ...
It is “nonsense” that Germany’s Energiewende destroys big utilities because it is a peculiar and unique policy, writes Ingo Arzt in a commentary in the left-wing taz. “The global utility world faces massive upheavals that will push companies into ...
The European Commission wants to directly negotiate with Russia a skeleton agreement on the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Otherwise, the project would “end up in court”, Commission Vice President Maros ...
Protesting for global climate protection efforts and against the US decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Greenpeace Germany has projected a heart-shaped map of the world and the words “Planet Earth first” onto the Elbphilharmonie building, the ...
E.ON spin-off Uniper made a net loss of 3.2 billion euros last year due to big writedowns on generation and gas-storage assets, reports Guy Chazan for the Financial Times. But Uniper said it had “good momentum for 2017” having delivered a “solid” ...
Angela Merkel’s decision to run for a fourth term as chancellor is a reason for delight for Germany’s right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), writes Jens Schneider in a commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Merkel embodies everything the AfD ...
The pro-fossil fuel stance of the new governing coalition in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) “could be a harbinger for a nationwide U-turn on the country's bold transition to renewable energies”, Marc Etzold and Cordula ...
The government’s decision to finance the country’s nuclear waste management with a public fund could poison the national debate for years to come, Thorsten Knuf writes in an opinion piece for Frankfurter Rundschau. Nuclear plant operators agreed to pay ...
The German Green Party ’s largest donor, Jochen Wermuth, heads an investment fund focussed on green energy, Ralph Bollmann writes in a profile feature for weekly newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Wermuth, a trained economist and ...
Germany should use its experience from the energy transition, the ambitious transformation away from fossil fuels towards renewables, to advance digitalisation, American economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin has told Handelsblatt Global in an ...
The fact that climate protection has been one of the most discussed topics at the G20 summit in Hamburg is “one of the paradoxical achievements of Donald Trump”, Michael Bauchmüller writes in an opinion piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Alas, the climate ...
11 Oct 2017, 00:00 Germany’s environment ministry fears high emissions from coal-fired power plants and transport will make the country miss its 2020 climate targets by a wider margin than previously anticipated. The ministry’s warning adds further ...
Social Democrat and federal economy minister Sigmar Gabriel blocked a reform of power grid fees for political reasons, writes Heike Göbel in an opinion piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Gabriel backtracked because a reform “would be very ...
An 18 percent drop in global expenditure on renewable energy last year does not mean the energy transition is losing support, Stefan Merx writes for Handelsblatt. Figures compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance merely reflected that costs for installing ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the parliament (German Bundestag) to find an agreement on national power grid fee alignment before the summer break, said economy minister Brigitte Zypries at the German energy industry conference BDEW Congress in ...
The digital transaction technology blockchain is regarded by some as the death knell for energy providers, while others believe it is far from being mature and applicable, Susanne Ehlerding writes in Der Tagesspiegel. “We don’t panic,” Maximilian Rinck, ...
German utility RWE’s stock price rose to a 10-month high as the company announced its first quarter results and confirmed the 2017 outlook, reports Tino Andresen for Bloomberg. “We got off to a good start this year and confirm our optimistic outlook as ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the upcoming G20 meeting in Hamburg will focus not only on the economic growth, but also on sustainable growth, Reuters writes, quoting a podcast of the Federal Press Office. "We've got to have a 'win ...
Energy policy was a burden on the 2017 coalition talks because the Green Party, the conservatives (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) narrowed the discussions down to a “symbolic political conflict”, writes Jakob Schlandt in Tagesspiegel. The parties ...
Almost all coal plants in the EU will make losses by 2030, according to a Carbon Tracker analysis, Jess Shankleman and Rachel Morison report for Bloomberg. Because battery storage will increasingly provide power at times of peak demand, and because the EU ...
The surplus on Germany’s green energy account continues to exceed five billion euros, compared to 4.3 billion euros in May 2016, reports Andreas Mihm in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But the surplus will shrink over the summer to pay for seasonally ...
G20 countries must promote climate protection and the implementation of the Paris Agreement, said the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Germanwatch and Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in a joint press release ...
Carmaker Daimler plans to develop a new generation of diesel engines regardless of pending driving bans in many German cities, according to a report by news agency dpa carried by manager magazine. “From today’s point of view, there is no reason to say ...
The former border between West and East Germany could become a problem for the country’s much-needed power transmission highways SuedLink and SuedOstLink, Andreas Mihm writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The government of the eastern German ...
Germany still has a long way to go before “the aim of a post-fossil society” is reached, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt. “The share of renewables in primary energy consumptions so far stands at only 14 percent,” he explains. The 30 percent share ...
A range of comparatively simple measures could increase the capacity of the German power grid within the next two to four years, energy think tank Agora Energiewende * finds in a study. An ad-hoc investment programme could improve the transmission grid to ...
Japan and Germany, as two of the world’s most technologically advanced countries, need to overcome the trauma brought about by the Fukushima nuclear disaster and focus on a vigorous decarbonisation of their economies, Peter Hennicke, of the German ...
The compulsory switch to smart meter readers will lead to higher costs and threats to the privacy of power customers “without holding any observable advantages up to now,” Kathrin Emse writes on shz.de. “Smart grids help grid operators ” by allowing them ...
German carmaker BMW will invest about 200 million euros over the next four years in a “battery cell centre of excellence” aimed at “grasping the technological aspects of battery cell production,” Henning Peitsmeier writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to introduce a high price on CO₂ emissions in the European Union would give France an “enormous competitive edge” over Germany, as his country’s energy supply is based mostly on emission-free nuclear and hydro ...
German utility E.ON said retail profits fell by more than a third in the first nine months, according to a Reuters report. E.ON, currently in the process of selling its remaining stake in fossil spin-off Uniper to Finland’s Fortum, said it is hammering ...
German lignite plants make up seven out of 10 of Europe’s biggest polluters, according to an analysis of European ETS data by climate NGO Sandbag. “That is because lignite power plants, especially in Germany, continue to run nearly 24 hours a day x 7 days ...
A research group, funded by German carmakers to design a study to show that modern diesel cars are clean, conducted an experiment in the US which exposed monkeys to diesel fumes- a “new dimension in the global emissions scandal”, writes the New York Times ...
The real lesson of the German Energiewende is not that the transition to renewables is very expensive. Quite the contrary: it is affordable in highly industrialised countries, writes Tomas Unnerstall in an article in the journal Energy, Sustainability and ...
05 Jan 2017, 00:00 The year 2017 will be filled with a multitude of seminal events for Germany's energy and climate policy. In addition to presiding over the next G20 summit, Germany will be the venue for the UN's COP23 and see legal reforms of ...
As long as Donald Trump is president of the US, it is “basically irrelevant” whether or not his country remains a party to the Paris Climate Agreement, development economist Stephan Klasen says on Zeit Online. Even if the US remained within the treaty, ...
German energy company innogy will take part in the country’s first call for tenders for offshore wind power plants with a 280 megawatt capacity project near the island of Heligoland in the North Sea, reports Jürgen Flauger for Handelsblatt. Innogy’s ...
The German car industry and transport sector receive hundreds of billions of euros in state support through different systems, writes Manfred Schäfers in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Diesel is taxed at a lower rate than petrol, meaning the government ...
Automotive supplier SHW is confident it will soon boost its revenues by providing parts for vehicles with alternative engines- despite losing a major order worth 100 million euros by US e-car manufacturer Tesla, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. CEO ...
The path to autonomous vehicles will be an evolution rather than a revolution, and fully “digital cars” won’t dominate Germany’s roads before 2040, according to a Deutsche Bank study. This is due to the industry’s long development cycles, the longevity of ...
Germany’s biggest power producer RWE won’t pay a dividend for a second consecutive year after writing off billions because of sliding electricity prices, report Lars Paulsson and Tino Andresen for Bloomberg. The Essen-based utility booked impairments of 4 ...
Energy data collector Fraunhofer ISE has updated its Energy Charts to illustrate the net electricity generation for public power supply in Germany in the first nine months of 2017. Renewables have a share of 37.5 percent. In the whole year of 2016 they ...
Germany needs an upper limit for state-set levies and taxes that comprise large parts of the consumer electricity price, in order to relieve power consumers of rising costs, the state economy minister of North Rhine-Westphalia told Handelsblatt. “We have ...
The German parliament’s vote to free nuclear plant operators of their liabilities for managing nuclear waste disposal has not ensured that all troubles have been dispelled, writes Michael Bauchmüller in Süddeutsche Zeitung. “New frictions are guaranteed, ...
German environment minister Barbara Hendricks said the German government was “disappointed” with the country’s major carmakers amid claims they formed a cartel to agree on prices, suppliers and technological standards. It would be a major “loss of trust” ...
Germany does not even come close to its claim of being a leading market for e-mobility, writes Lukas Bay in a commentary for the Handelsblatt. “Germany makes lots of announcements, but delivers very little.” German carmakers still don’t have attractive e ...
The German power market will not be split into two separate price zones, Germany’s council of federal state governments, the Bundesrat, has said in a press release. The council greenlighted a legal ordinance by the acting federal government that prevents ...
Baden-Württemberg’s Green state premier Winfried Kretschmann has defended the diesel technology as “the best combustion engine there is”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. “Clean diesel engines exist” and “we’re going to need them for a long time to ...
China is ready to fill the void left in international climate diplomacy left by a parting USA, former World Bank vice president and current board member of the European Climate Foundation* (ECF), Caio Koch-Weser writes in a guest commentary for ...
Volkswagen’s sound annual balance for 2016 encourages the German carmaker heavyweight to devise ambitious plans again- despite the ongoing diesel emissions fraud scandal potentially threatening the company’s survival in its current form, Max Hägler writes ...
Swiss voters have been lured into voting for the government’s Energy Strategy 2050 by “a phalanx of profiteers” of the new law, Giorgio V. Müller writes in a commentary for conservative Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). The vote could have been ...
Ahead of COP23 in Bonn in November, klimafakten.de has published a detailed infographic (see above) that explains processes, content and actors at a UN climate conference, and presents a timeline of past COPs. The graph is a translation from the Clean ...
The German government tried to bring climate and sustainable development into the mainstream of international politics at the G20 foreign affairs minister meeting in light of leadership changes in several member states, writes Irene Quaile for Deutsche ...
Germany’s negotiating coalition parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD), have defended their decision to postpone the country’s 2020 goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 ...
The Higher Administrative Court in Münster has put a temporary stop to the clearing of the Hambacher forest in North-Rhine Westphalia where energy company RWE wants to extend a lignite mine, Marlon Gego reports in the Aachener Zeitung. Friends of the ...
German utility EnBW’s planned windpark in the North Sea reckons with rising electricity prices and cheaper technology for wind parks, but it is not clear whether these assumptions will hold true, according to an article by Angela Hennersdorf in German ...
Energy efficiency businesses say the Greens are the most competent among German political parties when it comes to their field, according to a survey by the German Industry Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF). Social Democrats and Christian ...
Countries around the world have added record volumes of new renewable power capacities at cheaper prices, according to a joint report by the Frankfurt School – UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Expenditures for new renewables ...
German postal service Deutsche Post DHL and carmaker Ford are entering a partnership to manufacture electric delivery vans, Deutsche Post said in a press release. The new van – with the chassis of the Ford Transit providing the technical basis – will be ...
Germany’s major utility RWE intends to pay its 6.8 billion euro-contribution to a state-administered fund for financing the storage of nuclear waste without delay, raising questions about its actual financial status, Michael Bauchmüller writes in ...
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel’ conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has greenlighted talks aimed at reviving the so-called grand coalition with rival Social Democratic Party (SPD), news agency Reuters reports. A renewal of the coalition ...
A lack of an overarching transportation concept and an emphasis on unneeded projects causes many local authorities in Germany to waste money on public transport systems, transportation consultant Stefan Weigele said in an interview with Zeit Online. Many ...
The car industry may have managed to weaken new EU car emissions regulations, but at least the new rules provide urgently needed planning security, argues a commentary in Tagesspiegel. “That is necessary, because a lot of money will need to be invested. A ...
The turnover of German companies in the business of supplying energy efficiency solutions grew about 6 percent to 143 billion euros in 2016, compared to 2015, according to a study by German Industry Initiative for Energy Efficiency (DENEFF) and ...
German nuclear utilities E.ON, RWE and EnBW can hope for the repayment of about 6 billion euros after the Federal Constitutional Court declared the nuclear fuel tax law invalid and incompatible with basic law, reports Reuters. The federal government did ...
The government should run a stress test of Germany’s power supply security before switching off up to seven gigawatts worth of power station capacity, as has been suggested during the coalition talks of Angela Merkel’s CDU with the Greens and the pro ...
High wind power production during a storm led to a total of 35 hours of negative wholesale power prices over the holidays in Germany, writes Daniel Wetzel for Welt Online. “Because of the holidays, industry did not need the power,” and grid operators at ...
Russia and Germany have pledged to intensify their cooperation on implementing the Paris Agreement ’s climate protection targets, Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUB) said in a press release. Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in the BMUB ...
Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions rose to 906 million tonnes in 2016 (from 902 mln in 2015), due to colder weather and rising emissions in the transport sector, according to preliminary calculations by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The data ...
Denmark has in many respects been a role model for the Energiewende, but not all ideas put into practice by the small northern neighbour country are transferable to far bigger Germany, Jens Tartler writes in Der Tagesspiegel. Germany is much more densely ...
Rising power costs stir people’s emotions because everybody uses electricity and because they suggest a malfunction of government control, writes Til Huber in a commentary for merkur.de. But costs are largely driven by the past solar boom, and recent ...
Germany’s long-established battery producer Varta is confident that large-scale battery production for e-cars is economically viable in the high-wage country, Max Hägler writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Battery cell production is definitely possible in ...
A series of detrimental external factors and poor strategic reactions have led to a destabilisation of Germany’s electricity industry over recent years, a study conducted by the University of Stuttgart’s Institute for Social Sciences has found. Energy ...
Climate change is just “fiction” and the Energiewende is a “global socialist redistribution action“, said Ralf Borschke of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a session of the state parliament Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, reports ...
Primary energy consumption in Germany has slightly increased since it reached an all-time low in 2014, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) says in a press release. Provisional figures indicate that primary energy consumption is on the rise but the ...
