"Public utilities predestined to implement Energiewende"

Germany’s public utilities will be at the forefront of implementing the decentralised energy supply required by the Energiewende, Katherina Reiche, director of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU), said in an interview with Welt kompakt. Reiche said 97 percent of the energy provided by renewables was fed into distribution grids, which are largely operated by public utilities. The four major transmission grid operators argue for a centralised solution “that can’t be right,” Reiche told the newspaper. She said the transmission grid operators’ actions prompted some observers “to speak of an oligopoly forming in the energy market,” adding that public utilities were most suitable for implementing combined heat and power solutions and therefore “need the same access rights to data” as transmission grid operators “to serve their purpose on the ground.”

Read the article in German here.

For background, see the CLEW factsheet Combined heat and power - an Energiewende cornerstone? and the CLEW factsheet Small, but powerful – Germany’s municipal utilities.