“Investing in renewable energy, disempowering energy corporations”
Germany’s Energiewende should be democratic, ecologic and social, said the Left Party’s energy and climate spokesperson Eva Bulling-Schröter, presenting the Left’s energy policy cornerstones at an event by Forum Future Energies in Berlin. In the draft of its federal election campaign programme, published in January, the Left Party advocates the “socially fair ecologic transition created by the people in a democratic way”, with renewable energies, a coal exit, ecologic mobility, climate protection, a sustainable economy and the fight against energy poverty at the core. One of the party’s major focusses is taking power away from large energy companies and handing it to the people. Here are some of the draft programme’s provisions:
- Wants to finance “real energy transition”; “climate-harmful fossil energies are replaced by renewables”
- Privatising water, energy supply “destroys the basis of a democratic society and make it less fair”
- Energy economy should be organised by municipal utilities in locally-based, “decentral and democratic” way
- Advocates for a decentral energy system with more storage capacity and less power grid expansion
- Opposes reformed Renewable Energy Act (EEG), its auctions for renewables support, and limit on renewables expansion, says it threatens citizens’ energy, wants old EEG with feed-in tariffs back
- Supports “Energiewende fund” to finance renewables expansion
- Federal government “obstructs the coal exit, as well as the expansion of renewables” / its energy policy in the “profit interests of fossil energy companies and the car industry”
- Says socio-ecologic transition in Germany is also a question of global fairness, as climate change takes effect everywhere
Bulling-Schröter said she did not expect big programme changes in energy and climate policy before the deciding party convention on 9-11 June.
Find the programme draft in German here.
For background read the CLEW dossier Vote2017 - German elections and the Energiewende.