In the media: Climate action plan, industry concerns and power lines
Die Welt
Steel industry says its concerns over energy policy go unheard
Various voices from the steel industry raise concerns about the Energiewende in an article in Die Welt. Industry representatives are especially vexed about having to pay the renewable energy surcharge despite climate-friendly investments toward producing their own power. In a separate interview in Die Welt, Hans-Jürgen Kerkhoff, head of the steel industry association (Wirtschaftsvereinigung Stahl), calls for reforms in emissions trading.
Read the article in German here.
Read an interview in German here.
Tagesspiegel
Environment Minister wants airtight climate action plan
Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks won’t agree to any government climate action plan that doesn’t lead to Germany reaching its 2020 climate targets, the Tagesspiegel reports in a feature outlining political sparks around the plan. The government is expected to approve the plan on December 3. The country has suffered several years of rising CO2 levels, which means it’s now likely to miss its goal of slashing them 40 per cent by 2020 over 1990 levels. The country met its original targets, as defined by the Kyoto Protocol, in 2009. The paper also covered a forum it sponsored, in which politicians, industry representatives and academics debated whether the 40 per cent target should be changed.
Read the feature in German here.
Read the article on the forum here.
Tagesspiegel
How Germany’s power system will be adapted to accommodate the Energiewende
Dagmar Dehmer in the Tagesspiegel outlines the details of a plan put forth Tuesday by Germany’s four leading power network operators to expand the system of power lines carrying renewable energy from northern to southern regions. This is the second draft of Germany’s new grid development plan (Netzentwicklungsplan).
Read the article in German here.
The Guardian
“Subsidy cuts and weak EU targets cloud German solar energy revolution”
In a feature, The Guardian’s energy correspondent Arthur Neslen writes that the future of renewable energy in Germany is under threat. Despite high-profile projects like Werder Bremen FC’s football stadium, which is plated with solar panels, jobs have been lost in the solar technology sector as China gets in on mass-production, while falling feed-in tariffs are making renewable power generation less profitable. EU decisions have also had a negative impact on Germany’s renewable sector, Neslen writes, with Germany forced to bring forward an end to subsidies for solar power, while the Europe-wide target of 27 per cent of energy to be generated from renewables by 2030 is described by industry voices quoted in the article as “frustrating” and purely symbolic.
See the article in English here.
The Hill
“Germany’s Energiewende is not the boogeyman”
In a blog post for The Hill, Carol Werner and Jessie Stolark of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute in Washington write that renewable energy “is nothing to get spooked about.” The post says that though naysayers in the US claim Germany’s energy transition has hurt consumers, in fact, the average German electricity bill is only 100 US dollars, similar to that in the US, and 90 per cent of Germans back the Energiewende. They also point out that while the Fukushima disaster accelerated the transition, its roots go back to the 1970s.
See the article in English here.
