Why the coalition’s climate goals can hardly be met

In addition, an expansion of wind and solar power plants is necessary, as has never been done in Germany. The photovoltaic capacities alone are expected to increase from currently 54 GW to 200 GW by 2030. This means an annual net increase of 14.6 GW by 2030. The previous record comes from 2012. According to EWI, 7.9 GW were achieved at that time.

“It must be clear to everyone: The renewable energy targets of the coalition agreement are extremely ambitious,” said Kerstin Andreae, the general manager of the energy industry association BDEW, the Handelsblatt.

Association boss Andreae made it clear: The early coal exit could only be conditional. The security of supply must “be guaranteed at all times,” said Andreae. There is no doubt: the traffic light coalition has set the bar extremely high. This becomes clear not only with a view to the renewables target, which has been increased from 65 to 80 percent and the coal phase-out that is already being targeted for 2030 instead of 2038. The SPD, Greens and FDP are also reaching a new level of ambition in the transport sector.

According to the coalition agreement, 15 million all-electric cars will be rolling on the streets by 2030. Measured against today’s car population, this means that every third car would be battery-powered. This assumes that buying behavior has completely changed by the middle of the decade. “If the goal of 15 million electric cars is to be achieved by 2030, around 17 out of 20 newly registered cars would have to be purely battery-electric vehicles by 2025,” says EWI expert Gierkink. This in turn makes it necessary to intensify efforts to expand the charging infrastructure.

The switch to e-cars is not without consequences for the overall system. The drive turnaround will ensure a rapidly increasing demand for electricity – as will the planned replacement of gas or oil-powered boilers with electric heat pumps. In addition, there is the goal of the future coalition to double the capacity for electricity-intensive hydrogen electrolysis from the target of five GW to ten GW by 2030.

Factors beyond climate policy are also causing an increasing demand for electricity, which at the same time poses challenges for the operators of the electricity grids. For example digitization with its exorbitantly increasing data volume and a growing number of data centers. The planned giga-factories for the production of battery cells will also have a noticeable effect on electricity consumption.

Consumption forecast is increasing rapidly

The coalition agreement states that the gross electricity demand in 2030 will be in a range between 680 and 750 terawatt hours (TWh). This forecast clearly surpasses the forecast of the executive federal government, which was last revised upwards in mid-November, in which 658 TWh is assumed. In 2020, gross electricity consumption in the Federal Republic of Germany was 545 TWh.

According to the EMI, one must assume that consumption will level off in the upper range of the range specified by the future coalition. The EWI itself assumes 725 TWh in 2030.

The increasing demand for electricity ensures that the generation capacity that can be called up at any time also grows. Because many of the new electricity consumers are not particularly flexible in their demand. This applies, for example, to electrically operated heat pumps in buildings – nobody wants to have a cold apartment in winter because there is currently a lull and the sky is overcast. “The inflexible peak demand could rise from 77 GW to 95 gigawatts,” says EWI expert Johannes Wagner. “So we don’t need less, but more secure performance than today.”

But with the coal phase-out and the nuclear phase-out, the guaranteed output is running out. Today, secured performance is largely provided by coal-fired power plants, gas-fired power plants, nuclear power plants, biogas plants and hydropower plants. They can always be used reliably when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.

More secure performance required

Since the future coalition is striving to get out of coal-fired power generation earlier than previously planned, the pressure to keep the overall system stable is growing: “So far, we have assumed that coal-fired power plants with a total of up to twelve GW of installed capacity will still be on the grid in 2030. If these power plants are to be shut down by 2030, this will increase the need for replacement in the area of ​​guaranteed output, ”says Gierkink.

Additional gas-fired power plants come into consideration here. When the coal phase-out was not yet targeted for 2030, but for 2038, the EWI experts assumed a need for new gas-fired power plants of 14 GW. Now the EWI is increasing the value to 23 GW.

According to EWI, a small part of the secured output will in future also be covered by battery storage. “So far we have assumed two GW of battery storage capacity in our calculations, but now four GW will be required. That is an ambitious figure. Building up these capacities is by no means a sure-fire success, ”says Johannes Wagner from EWI. Battery storage systems in the gigawatt class are still a long way off. In the future, too, they should only serve the purpose of compensating for minor fluctuations.

From the point of view of the industry, it is now important to commission additional gas-fired power plants as quickly as possible, which can then be converted from natural gas to hydrogen at a later point in time. “Anyone who wants to phase out coal must not oppose new, hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants. It must be ensured that these power plants are actually built ”, says BDEW General Manager Kerstin Andreae:“ There is not much time left. ”

EWI expert Gierkink shares the view that politicians must first create the framework so that new gas-fired power plants can actually be built: “The market conditions currently do not allow the expansion of 23 gigawatts. There should be state incentives. “
The traffic light coalition certainly holds out the prospect of such incentives. In the corresponding passage of the coalition agreement it says: In order to promote the rapid expansion of secured capacity and secure the nuclear and coal phase-out, “we will evaluate existing instruments in this context and examine competitive and technology-open capacity mechanisms and flexibilities”. What exactly is to be understood by this is unclear, however.

The problem: months will pass before the relevant regulations are finalized. So investment decisions for gas-fired power plants are still a long way off.

“Even if it becomes economically interesting to build hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants, the implementation is a challenge. The lead time for the construction of a power plant is considerable, the planning and approval requirements are high, ”says Gierkink.
Companies from the industry also point out that good will alone is not enough to make progress in the construction of gas-fired power plants or the expansion of renewable energies. “Which projects can be implemented depends, among other things, on the framework conditions, the network expansion and the speed of the approval process,” says the energy company RWE.

In addition, climate protectors and parts of the Greens fundamentally reject new gas-fired power plants. The Green Youth, for example, the youth organization of the Greens, calls for an end to the use of natural gas by 2035 at the latest and considers the construction of new gas-fired power plants to be fundamentally dangerous. The coalition agreement takes this idea into account by stipulating: New gas-fired power plants must be built in such a way that they can be converted to run on climate-neutral gas – i.e. with green hydrogen, for example.

The energy industry does not share the assumption that Germany will in future use more electricity than it produces over the course of the year and will therefore have to import the rest. With the addition of new gas-fired power plants and the massive expansion of renewable energies, Germany will “probably export net electricity again”, says EnBW board member Georg Nikolaus Stamatelopoulos.

More electricity is sold abroad

EWI calculations support this assumption. “The growing share of electricity production from volatile sources means that there will be more and more phases in which the electricity cannot be used domestically. Part of this electricity will then be exported abroad, ”says EWI expert Wagner. “On balance, Germany therefore remains an electricity exporter in this scenario. However, this should not be taken as an indication that the supply is becoming more secure, ”he adds.

“The electricity is likely to be exported often at low prices,” says Wagner. Other industry insiders express themselves less diplomatically: “We will increasingly have to sell electricity abroad,” says an energy manager. At the same time they are desperately looking for secured power plant performance.

EWI confirms this: Assured power plant output will be a scarce commodity across Europe, says EWI expert Wagner: “In our calculations, we assume that part of the secured power plant output comes from abroad. We are assuming a value of ten gigawatts. “

If the goals of the coalition agreement were to be implemented, according to EWI calculations, the climate goals for the energy sector for 2030 would be “significantly exceeded”. “That would take the pressure off other sectors, such as transport and buildings, where CO2 reduction could prove to be more difficult,” says Gierkink.

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