A first step towards the power plant strategy: Robert Habeck, Olaf Scholz and Christian Lindner. Picture Alliance
By 2030, 80 percent of Germany’s electricity should come from renewable energies. This not only requires the construction of wind and solar systems, power grids and new storage systems.
To prevent “dark lulls” when neither the sun shines nor the wind blows, new gas power plants are to be built that could later be operated with green hydrogen.
The traffic light has now presented a plan to make such power plants worthwhile for the operators. There is talk of 16 billion euros in funding and quick approval procedures.
The core of the energy transition is the move away from fossil fuels in electricity generation. By 2030, 80 percent of electricity in Germany should come from renewable energies. To achieve this, wind and solar energy must be expanded as well as the electricity grids. There is a need for new electricity storage and provision for “dark lulls”. These are times when the sun doesn’t shine and there’s no wind. For this purpose, new gas power plants are to be built, which will later be operated with hydrogen. For a long time, the traffic light did not have a plan on how this could be financed. Now there is an agreement.
The new power plant strategy is intended to create the framework within which utilities can build and operate flexible gas power plants, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP).
In the short term, new power plants with a capacity of four times 2.5 gigawatts are to be put out to tender. The funding is to be financed from the Climate and Transformation Fund, a special federal fund. The costs would be around 16 billion euros for the next 20 years, the German Press Agency reported, citing the coalition.
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The ministries want to develop precise regulations on how power plant operators should be paid for maintaining capacity for dark periods by summer at the latest. The planning and approval procedures for the new power plants should be greatly accelerated. The power plant strategy is still being discussed with the EU Commission in Brussels.
New power plants as a reserve in times of darkness
This was preceded by long negotiations in the traffic lights, led by Scholz, Habeck and Lindner. The energy industry has been waiting for a long time for a strategy to build hydrogen-capable gas power plants by 2030. It has so far been reluctant to invest because the new power plants are not profitable without continuous operation.
Habeck had always supported government funding worth billions for the gas-hydrogen solution. FDP politicians had pointed out the high costs and called for openness to technology.
The traffic light coalition wants to “ideally” bring forward the coal phase-out to 2030 in order to prevent the emission of climate-damaging carbon dioxide. So far, an eight-year phase-out has only been decided in the Rhenish lignite mining area. It is controversial in the areas of East Germany. New gas power plants could primarily replace coal-fired power plants. They will initially be operated with natural gas, but then increasingly with climate-friendly hydrogen.
Last year, the share of renewable energies in electricity production in Germany rose to more than 50 percent for the first time.
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