The majority of cars still have combustion engines and heat their homes with gas or oil.
(Photo: REUTERS)
Gas prices at record levels, sharply rising electricity costs and increasingly expensive tank fillings. No matter where you look in the world – the energy price crisis is the topic of the hour. Since the beginning of the year, the wholesale price of natural gas alone has risen by around 440 percent. This is also felt by the consumer: According to the comparison portal Verivox, gas costs are currently 28 percent higher than last year.
Critics feel confirmed: climate protection will cost us all dearly, now the time has come. But to believe that is a mistake.
The reason for the price surge for energy and raw materials is neither the CO2 price nor the e-car subsidy or the nuclear phase-out. Prices are rising worldwide because the economy is recovering much faster than expected after the pandemic and demand is accordingly higher than planned.
Then there are flooded coal mines in India, droughts in China and logistics problems around the world. High demand and insufficient supply: This leads to rising prices. Fossil raw materials are more expensive than they have been in years.
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Conversely, this should actually mean that renewable energies, which are already the cheapest way of generating electricity in many parts of the world, now have an even greater competitive advantage over fossil fuels. If only we had built enough wind and solar systems in the past two decades. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Now years of idleness in terms of the energy transition is taking its toll
Germany, Europe and the rest of the world will still be overly dependent on fossil fuels in 2021. The vast majority of mankind uses fuel instead of electricity to drive his vehicle, heats with crude oil and uses fossil fuels from the socket. And that is slowly becoming more and more expensive for the consumer.
From a climate policy perspective, however, exactly what is happening is what experts have been calling for for years: Fossil raw materials finally have the price they deserve. If the consequential costs for the climate and the environment had been included in the ton of coal from the start, wind and solar power would have been the cheaper energy source years ago.
Now climate-damaging products and behaviors are becoming noticeably more expensive and are creating incentives for more environmentally friendly alternatives. At least that’s the theory. In practice, however, this only works if there are enough or enough affordable alternatives.
Consumers are paying the bill for the snail’s pace of politics
The reality with a few heat pumps and electric cars in Germany and the rest of the world is far from that. And that’s how long the consumer pays the bill for the lagging energy transition.
If prices continue to climb, households would have to pay around ten percent more for electricity and a whopping 45 percent more for fossil heat and transport with combustion vehicles in 2030, according to calculations by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Even with a massively accelerated conversion to a climate-neutral economy by 2050, the energy costs for the consumer will rise, albeit at a significantly lower rate. In the long term, climate protection will even lower energy prices.
Regulations and rising CO2 prices would have led to higher energy costs anyway. But the fact that they are already shooting up so massively is an explosive mixture.
On the one hand, it could give investors and capital providers an incentive to invest in the expansion of fossil fuels. On the other hand, a successful climate change requires the support of the population. That is why rapidly rising energy costs for consumers must be kept within limits as much as possible. Or be financially offset per household via a more frequently proposed CO2 account.
The masses do not switch from combustion engines to electric cars overnight. Just as little as everyone can and will not replace their oil or gas heating system with heat pumps and fuel cells with immediate effect. Nevertheless, energy must remain affordable for every household. So what to do
We have to invest more in renewable energies faster
With regard to the fight against climate change, only one thing can really help against the current energy price crisis: a significantly faster expansion of renewable energies. The less fossil fuels the world needs, the less dependent it is on the price peaks of coal, oil and gas.
But that will be difficult to achieve at the current pace. For that to change, investments in renewable and green technologies would have to triple over the next ten years, according to the International Energy Agency. Otherwise there is a danger of a dangerous green electricity gap. We are not yet investing enough to satisfy our future hunger for energy. And it is precisely this uncertainty that increases the risk of a long-term energy price crisis.
More: The higher inflation is welcome – and necessary for the transformation of the German economy