In the media: Coal reserve will cost ten billion euros more
WirtschaftsWoche
“Gabriel’s energy concept will cost Germany dearly”
Energy minister Sigmar Gabriel has called his energy concept a “historic pact for new prosperity” but what he didn’t say was that the compromise would cost power consumers and taxpayers around ten billion euros more than the originally planned climate levy for old coal fired power stations, write Angela Hennersdorf and Marc Ethold in the WirtschaftsWoche. Energy utilities can be happy – instead of having to pay the levy on emissions, they will receive a “juicy reward,” as the government will pay them 230 million euros per year for transferring 2.7 gigawatts of lignite capacity into a reserve, the authors say.
Read the article in German here.
Read a CLEW article on the coal reserve compromise here.
Die Welt
“Grid expansion must not be delayed”
Lower Saxony’s state premier Stephan Weil is urging the federal government to speed up legal reform on the new priority for buried power cables, Die Welt reports. Particularly if current plans for power line corridors need adjusting, legal clarity is necessary so grid operators can change their plans accordingly, Weil says. “The grid expansion must not be delayed,” he says in the newspaper. Lower Saxony would like to see more parts of the new north-south grid connections buried, just as much as Bavaria does, the article says.
rbb
“Vattenfall wants to pull out of lignite operations in Lusatia by mid-2016”
Energy utility Vattenfall is looking to sell its power plant and lignite mining operations in the Lusatia region by mid-2016, radio station rbb reports. Vattenfall chairman Hartmuth Zeiß told workers at lignite power station Jänschwalde on Friday that the paperwork for potential buyers should be completed by September 2015. There is talk of two buyers interested in the operations, the article says. Vattenfall doesn’t deem the lignite sector profitable anymore, rbb writes. Two block units of power station Jänschwalde will likely go offline as part of government plans for a coal reserve that phases-out the most polluting lignite power stations.
Read the article in German here.
See a CLEW factsheet on the coal reserve as an alternative to the climate levy here.
Handelsblatt
“More energy please”
The German government must kickstart e-mobility with more subsidies if it wants a million e-cars on the road by 2020 as planned, writes Peter Mosch, head of the works council at car company Audi, a subsidiary of VW, in Handelsblatt. “E-mobility requires a subsidised triad of infrastructure, sales incentives, and the establishment of battery cell production (in Germany).” Mosch argues pushing the technology is also necessary to ensure the German and European car industry will not be left behind in international competition.
