Boosting renewables will cut Germany's energy costs – renewables industry

Germany must use the price advantage of renewable energy sources to weather the energy crisis over the coming winter and beyond, said the renewables association BEE. The lobby group said that renewables had played a significant role in bringing down power prices in recent years, and presented a package with proposals to give low-emission technologies a boost. “Renewable energies are the fundamental pillar for remedying the current price crisis,” said the organisation. In the short term, the government should lift restrictions on bioenergy, make it easier to connect heat pumps to the grid, speed up the connection of solar facilities, and replace old wind turbines with more powerful new ones. “10,000 MW [megawatts] of planned wind energy projects are currently awaiting approval and 45,000 MW of capacity can be connected to the grid in the next three years through repowering,” said BEE head Simone Peter. “For this, we need LNG speed for renewables as well,” she added, referring to government efforts to rapidly build up an import infrastructure for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Germany’s government has introduced various energy and climate initiatives. It adopted what it called the “biggest energy policy reform in decades” in April, which included the target of covering 80 percent of its electricity use with renewables by 2030, and almost 100 percent green electricity five years later. The government also agreed to a second batch of legislation in June, as well as smaller changes such as improving energy efficiency in buildings. All of this is part of a larger 2022 climate action programme, which has yet to be published in full. Several reports by think tanks and consultancies expect Russia's war on Ukraine to boost the energy transition by bringing about a long-term shift away from Russian fossil fuels.