Energy policy “detached from reality”

The German Energiewende could fail due to policymakers’ unrealistic goal of an energy system relying almost entirely on electricity by 2050, former German Energy Agency head Stephan Kohler writes in an op-ed for the Handelsblatt. “There has probably never been a project in Germany with such a big gap between ambitions, targets and reality as the energy transition,” Kohler says. He argues that adding over 300,000 kilometres of electricity cable and building massive storage capacities for fluctuating renewable power “can never be accomplished”. Germany’s imminent failure to meet its own 2020 emissions reduction goals demonstrates that a “stupid expansion” of solar and wind power alone cannot be the only way to protect the climate, Kohler says, arguing that a focus on sector-by-sector CO₂ limits that emitters find their own economically viable means to achieving would be far more efficient.

Read the article in German here (behind paywall).