( Clean Energy Wire ) – German industry is increasingly investing in climate protection measures, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported just before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), which kicked off on 30 November.

Climate protection investments in the manufacturing sector have increased by 74.3 percent over a decade. In 2021, manufacturers spent some 4.15 billion euros on systems to avoid emissions or use resources more sparingly, up from 2.38 billion in 2011. Legal regulations and government funding have contributed to the increase in investments, Destatis notes.

Nearly 50 percent of climate protection investments in 2021 — 2.04 billion euros [$2.22 bn.] — went to renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and photovoltaic systems.

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Companies invested a further 1.63 billion euros ($1.77 bn) (39.2%) in increasing energy efficiency and energy saving, such as thermal insulation of buildings or systems with combined heat and power. The manufacturing and service sectors generated sales of 53 billion euros with climate protection products in 2021 – an 11.9 percent increase compared to the previous year.

The solar sector saw the biggest sales increase in 2021 with a 24 percent boost (920 million euros) for a total of 4.8 billion euros. From 2011 to 2021, sales of climate protection products – such a solar PV arrays and insulation – rose 16 percent. Nearly 55 percent of sales, or 28.6 billion euros, came from measures to increase energy efficiency in 2021.

Thermal insulation of buildings contributed substantially, generating almost 10.2 billion euros [$11.1 bn.] in sales, while the manufacture and installation of wind turbines resulted in revenue of 11.8 billion euros [$12.8 bn.].

Meanwhile, the number of employees in “green jobs,” increased by 44 percent between 2011 and 2021.

German development bank KfW recently reported that climate protection investments by domestic companies in 2022 rose by 18 percent in real terms to 72 billion euros [$78.4 bn.].

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( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany has added 50 percent more new wind power capacity in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same time period last year, reports news agency dpa in an article published by the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Preliminary figures seen by dpa show that 518 new turbines were constructed between January and September, corresponding to an additional 2.4 gigawatts capacity.

Most of the expansion occurred in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, all northern states, following. However, 316 old turbines were shut down since January, leaving a net increase of 202 installations, with newer ones being much more efficient.

Part of the reason for the uptick is the increased rate of approval for new turbines, the agency reported. The first nine months of this year saw the approval of 976 turbines across the country, equivalent to an capacity increase of 77 percent.

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( Clean Energy Wire ) – The past decade has seen a sharp drop in prices for clean technologies, which means models identifying efficient pathways to reduce emissions could become subject to change.

Plummeting prices for solar and wind power generation, battery storage or heat pumps could make the energy transition take effect faster than previously expected, according to a report by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).

“The fight against global warming remains an enormous political challenge – but at least new, cheaper ways are opening up,” the MCC said. During the past decade, solar power generation has become 87 percent and battery storage 85 percent cheaper, according to the institute.

While scenarios compatible with the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C are optimistic regarding the deployment of technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), they don’t reflect the rates of technological learning and upscaling in renewables in the past decade, the researchers wrote.

There is now evidence “that fossil-free alternatives could become a game changer instead,” according to the MCC.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are higher than ever, the measures taken so far are too weak, but in this politically muddled situation, technological progress provides a ray of hope,” report co-author Jan Minx said.

New decarbonisation models could show that, in the foreseeable future, the global energy transition might be less costly than previously assumed and even help to save costs, Minx added.

The models informing pathways to reduce emissions “would benefit from updated cost assumptions . . . higher resolution on sector coupling, and an overall consideration of demand-side solutions,” the authors concluded.

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( Clean Energy Wire) – Renewables covered more than half of Germany’s electricity consumption so far this year, according to calculations by utility association BDEW and the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW). Between January and September, the amount of renewables in the electricity mix rose to around 52 percent – an increase of almost five percentage points compared to the same period last year.

“Between March and September, the share of renewable energies was consistently around 50 percent or more in every single month. The months of May and July were particularly strong, with a renewable share of 57 and 59 percent, respectively,” said BDEW and the ZSW.A decrease in Germany’s total power consumption helped push up the share of renewables, they added.

However, renewable energy generation also rose by almost 4 percent in absolute terms, reaching 199 billion kWh in the first three quarters of the year. In June, electricity generation from photovoltaics reached a new monthly record of 9.8 billion kWh – an increase of more than 16 percent compared to the same month last year.

Photo by Andreas Gücklhorn, German solar facility, on Unsplash

“These figures encourage us to tackle the next milestones. In particular, obstacles to the expansion of wind energy must be removed,” said BDEW head Kerstin Andreae.

She added that Germany urgently needed to install hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants to guarantee future power supply in times without wind or sunshine.

Germany is aiming for 80 percent renewable power in its electricity mix by 2030, with wind considered the most important source.

The increasing electrification of sectors that so far rely on other energy sources, especially heating and mobility, are likely to boost the total demand for electricity in the next few years while cutting fossil fuel use.

While the rollout of solar power has accelerated recently, the expansion of wind power in Germany remains off-track.

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( Clean Energy Wire ) – The record rainfalls triggering deadly floods in Libya and Greece dwarf the precipitation that caused Germany’s 2021 flood catastrophe, and are a grim reminder of the need to act on and adapt to climate change, said German climate researcher Mojib Latif in an interview with public broadcaster BR.

“In the past week, we’ve measured rainfall volumes never seen before in Europe,” Latif said. “At times, this has been multiple times the volume we’ve seen in the Ahr Valley flood,” the researcher said, pointing to Germany’s worst floods catastrophe in decades that killed 135 people in the region and dozens more across Europe in 2021.

The heavy rains that fell “in a very, very short time” in the Mediterranean had become “a sort of Medicane” that can be attributed to climate change, the researcher from the GEOMAR marine research institute stressed. Latif said Europe has been complacent with respect to the damages expected from global warming for too long and needed to adapt quickly.

“I think this is beginning to change now,” he added. “We’re starting to see that climate change not only means higher temperatures, but especially more extreme weather, more potential for damage and above all a gigantic challenge for people’s health.”

The storm that hit several countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region had triggered unprecedented floods in northern Greece and killed more than 5,000 people in Libya alone.

The damages from torrential rains and floods, but also from forest fires, droughts, and storms have risen across Europe in the past years, leading the EU to call for a revision of disaster response funding that is starting to become overstretched by the number of incidents occurring in a short span of time. European countries are struggling to adapt to the fast-mounting challenges of a heating climate and are seeking strategies that allow to better cope with the effects natural disasters have on health, food production and economic stability.

Via Clean Energy Wire

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( Clean Energy Wire ) – Berlin’s Senate has adopted a five-billion-euro climate protection fund to flow into mobility, energy efficiency in buildings, power supply and the economy. The goal of the fund, which could be doubled to 10 billion euros by 2026, is to improve climate protection, swiftly end dependency on fossil fuels and cut emissions faster in the German capital, according to Berlin’s governing coalition led by the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD).

“We’re still living with a 90-percent dependency on coal, gas and oil,” Manja Schreiner, the city’s CDU environment senator, told German public radio. Schreiner added that Berlin needs a “sustainable, integrated energy supply,” and that the focus will be on solar as well as on “properly promoting” geothermal energy, hydropower and waste heat from data centres as energy sources.

The bill will now go for debate in the state parliament in the hope it will be passed by the end of the year. Tagesspiegel writes that if passed, the fund could end up being challenged in court because of Germany’s constitutional restrictions on government debt.

The country’s constitution does, however, allow for exceptions to the so-called “debt brake” in cases of “natural catastrophe or in extraordinary emergencies.” The CDU-SPD coalition says it sees the impact of climate change in Berlin, aggravated by the energy and cost-of-living crises as well as the Ukraine war, as an “emergency situation.”

The parties had initially mooted the fund during coalition negotiations in March, saying at the time that additional investments were needed to achieve climate neutrality in the buildings, transport and heating sectors.

Still, the CDU-SPD coalition has come under fire for halting new cycle lane projects in the city to save car parking spaces. A citizen-initiated referendum on making Berlin climate neutral by 2030, which failed in March, had also been criticised by the coalition parties.

Via Clean Energy Wire

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( Clean Energy Wire ) – Oil majors BP and TotalEnergies pledged to pay a combined 12.6 billion euros [$14.7 bn.] for the right to build wind farms in the North and Baltic seas in the world’s largest ever offshore wind auction. Environmentalists hailed the result as a “quantum leap” for the technology, as it showed how cheap renewables had become. The surprisingly high entry fee – described as “obscene” by an industry source – in the first tender of this kind in Germany reflects strong industry demand for green power. But it also triggered concerns that German industry might end up paying more than it would hope for the electricity generated in the new wind farms, and that fossil fuel giants with deep pockets could harm competition in the offshore market.

Multinational oil companies BP and TotalEnergies emerged as winners in Germany’s latest auction for the right to build offshore wind farms in the North and Baltic seas. The companies, which are headquartered in the UK and France, bid a combined 12.6 billion euros to construct turbines with a total capacity of 7 gigawatts (GW), roughly equivalent to 7 large conventional power stations, and almost equalling the country’s entire existing offshore capacity.

“The results confirm the attractiveness of investing in offshore wind energy in Germany,” said the head of Germany’s grid agency, Klaus Müller. “Competition in offshore wind power has never been so high.”

Müller added the results are a key step towards achieving Germany’s target to increase offshore wind power to 30 GW by 2030 – from around 8 GW installed today.

The auction marks the first time that investors pay for the right to build offshore wind parks in Germany. Three of the auctioned sites – each for building 2 GW of turbine capacity – are located around 120 km northwest of the island of Heligoland in the North Sea, and one with 1 GW lies in the Baltic Sea, some 25 km off the island of Ruegen.

Environmental NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) called the result a “quantum leap” for offshore wind energy. “Wind power at sea is now so economically attractive that project developers are outbidding each other for access to marine areas,” said DUH executive director Sascha Müller-Kraenner. “The fairy tale of expensive green electricity is thus finally off the table.”

The cost of constructing new offshore wind farms has fallen markedly in recent years, making the reliable technology one of the most profitable renewable power sources on the market. Germany plans to greatly increase its offshore capacity in a bid to reach its ambitious renewable power share target of 80 percent by the end of the decade.The auction results underline decreasing costs.

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German offshore industry representatives said the prices paid by the oil companies were excessive, and could end up stifling competition. “The sums are obscene,” an industry source, who was part of a non-successful bid, told business daily Handelsblatt. It also reported that German utilities RWE and EnBW, Danish Orsted, and French EdF all submitted bids.

Industry experts said the results reflected increasing market pressure, as well as strong industry demand for green power – switching to renewables is a central component of companies’ decarbonisation plans. “It is not surprising that applicants are bidding money to win the bid. But the level of bids is quite remarkable,” Dirk Briese from the consultancy Wind Research told Handelsblatt. “The bidders know that electricity from green sources can be marketed very well and increasingly better in the future.”

BP said it would consume part of the electricity produced by the wind farms itself, for example in refineries, for hydrogen production, as well as the company’s e-car charging network, with the remainder going directly to industrial customers via so-called “Power Purchase Agreements” (PPAs).

Some experts and offshore industry representatives warned that investors will recoup their massive entrance fee by selling the electricity for a correspondingly high price, regardless of low generation costs. This could counteract efforts to lower power prices for industry by the government, which is currently weighing a plan to subsidise industry electricity to boost companies’ international competitiveness.

“The price is likely to be around ten cents [per kilowatt-hour] rather than the five cents the German government hopes to arrive at with the energy transition in the medium term,” wrote Steven Hanke in energy newsletter Tagesspiegel Background.

Proponents of the new auction procedure counter that 90 per cent of the 12.6 billion euros are to go towards lowering electricity costs by cutting grid fees, with the remainder to be spent on marine environment protection and sustainable fishing.

No breathing space for offshore wind industry?

The German engineering federation VDMA said the auction result proved that offshore wind can contribute significantly to lowering generation costs. But it added that the government made a mistake by sticking to the bidding procedure because it didn’t leave enough breathing space for the offshore industry. “Because in order to achieve the expansion targets in Germany and Europe, we need further investment in product innovations, in the scaling of production capacities, and in transport equipment and infrastructures.”

The German Foundation Offshore Wind Energy also said the auction design favoured market concentration to a few giant players with huge resources at their disposal. Director Karina Würtz said she “generally welcomed” the entry of the large oil and gas companies with their know-how and financial strength into the German offshore wind market, reported Tagesspiegel Background. But with a view to next year’s tender, she added: “If the auction design has not been revised by then, there is a danger of an oligopoly in the German offshore wind market, as the bidding levels and the already large project realisation risks can now only be shouldered and borne by a small group of companies.”

Via Clean Energy Wire

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Clean Energy Wire / Zeit Online

( Clean Energy Wire ) – Car registrations in Germany have risen by 13 percent in the first half of 2023 – compared to the same period last year – with the number of newly registered electric vehicles increasing most significantly, according to data by the federal motor transport authority (KBA). Registrations for purely battery-powered cars increased by close to a third (31.7%) to slightly more than 220,000 in the first half of the year, compared to the first half of 2022.

Registrations in June alone saw a two third increase compared to the same month the previous year. Last year a shortage of components led to an order pileup, which is likely driving the numbers up, newspaper Zeit reports. Large fleet companies and car rental companies were the main reason for the increase in new registrations (almost 70%), while private car registrations increased only slightly.

However, the increasing popularity of electric vehicles did not cause the average CO₂ emissions of newly registered cars to fall in the first half of the year, according to the KBA.

The reason may lie in SUVs, which have also increased in popularity and are considered particularly harmful to the climate, according to Zeit.

Gasoline engine cars still account for the largest share of new registrations at 35.6 percent, while the market share for electric vehicles lies at 18.9 percent. Demand for diesel cars grew again to reach 16.7 percent.

The electrification of the transport sector is key for the energy transition: switching combustion engine cars for electric vehicles is set to make a big contribution in reducing emissions in the sector, as they have remained stubbornly high for years.

Via Clean Energy Wire

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