Thursday, 21 September 2017
With the German election looming next week, Germany is seeing its ambitious Energy Transition – the Energiewende – stall.
Despite the many political promises, the current scenario looks bad for renewables. According to the EU Directive, the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption for Germany in 2020 should be 18 percent. Whereas in its new study, the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) has pushed the forecasts down to only 16% in 2020 from 16.7%. The tender process, put in place to encourage renewable deployment and replace Germany’s feed-in tariff, has been a complete failure, says the Energy Watch Group. Dramatic declines in large scale solar PV, biomass, hydropower, and geothermal have taken place since tenders were introduced.
The pessimistic view is also due to increased energy consumption in heat and transport. If consumption rises, the volume of renewable energy required to fulfill the 18 per cent target is ...