Boon and bane of Germany's heat wave/ Employment plan for coal regions

Trees in German cities are stressed by an unusual drought that affects their ability to absorb CO2 and convert it into oxygen, biologist Michael Blaschke says in an article written by Peter Clement in the Rheinische Post. Many trees in inner cities shed their leaves to save energy, and contrary to their fellow specimen in forests, their root system is usually not extensive enough to source water from deeper layers of the soil, biologist Blaschke says. “They need all of our help right now,” he warns, adding that an average tree needs between 50 and 80 litres of water per day to flourish. In many German cities, firefighters currently use their equipment to water trees and green spaces. A big tree can convert up to 9,400 litres of CO2 on a sunny day, equivalent to the carbon output of two or three families, but this ability is greatly diminished if the plant does not have enough water at its disposal. “This climate cooling effect is largely absent this year,” Blaschke says.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW article Germany’s power system weathers heat wave despite fossil plant curbs and the dossier Cities, municipalities, and the Energiewende for more information.

A state-managed fund for dealing with the financial legacy of lignite mining in Germany is the wrong way to ensure that the extraction’s long-term effects are dealt with properly, Antje Höning writes in a commentary for the General Anzeiger Bonn. Contrary to the existing nuclear fund, which the state uses to deal with the so-called “eternal costs” of safely storing nuclear waste, a similar fund called for by the Green Party for lignite mine renaturation is unnecessary, she writes. “The energy companies are responsible for the restoration of their mines – so the state has to leave them the money to do it,” Höning says. Germany’s energy companies are financially healthy enough to accomplish this task, “and whoever calls for a lignite fund intends to bring about an immediate coal exit. Germany’s coal exit commission must not allow this to happen,” she writes.

See CLEW’s Commission watch and the factsheet Germany’s coal exit commission for background.

The German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) might order the recall of 124,000 electric cars due to the fact that some of their parts contain the toxic metal cadmium, Annina Reimann reports in the WirtschaftsWoche. Car industry supplier Kostal delivered the contaminated parts to carmakers VW, Audi, and Porsche, but other manufacturers could be affected too, including US carmaker Tesla, the article says.

Find the article in German here (paywall).

Political restrictions on wind power expansion rather than cost pressure in the sector are responsible for the current troubles of many wind power companies in Germany, Hermann Albers, head of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), says in a press release. Between 2014 and 2017, Germany on average added 4,600 megawatts (MW) of onshore wind power, Albers says. The changes made with the Renewable Energy Act’s 2017 reform are aimed at reducing expansion to 2,800 MW per year. “Not the lack of demand but that of clearly defined political decisions let the market shrink by 40 percent,” he says. Albers calls for a restart of the government’s wind power policy to secure jobs and market shares of German companies, and urges the adoption of a strategy to reach the country’s ambitious 2030 renewable energy goal.

Read the press release in German here.

See the CLEW article Wind industry calls for special auctions amid expansion slowdown for more information.