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Grand coalition wants to double the expansion of green electricity in the coming year

2021-04-22T14:16:43.268Z


Six gigawatts of photovoltaics, four gigawatts of wind turbines on land: SPD and Union will significantly increase the expansion of renewable energies in the coming year, but according to SPIEGEL they cannot agree on long-term goals.


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Wind power plants in North Rhine-Westphalia: more electricity from renewable energies

Photo: Jochen Tack / imago images

In the coming year, 1.1 gigawatts more wind turbines and 4.1 gigawatts more photovoltaic systems are to be installed than previously planned.

This emerges from a written agreement between the SPD and the Union that SPIEGEL has received.

This will roughly double the expansion of green electricity in 2021.

For the following years, other than planned, the grand coalition was unable to reach a compromise.

The share of renewable energies should actually increase significantly because of the higher climate targets set by the European Commission.

According to SPIEGEL information, the additional tender volume for photovoltaics is distributed as follows: Two gigawatts are to be allocated to open-space systems, another two gigawatts to photovoltaic systems on or on buildings and 100 megawatts for innovation tenders such as solar systems that provide shade on fields.

The black-red coalition has also agreed on billions in relief for consumers in terms of electricity prices. To this end, the EEG surcharge is also to be stabilized in 2023 and 2024 with funds from the federal budget. The EEG surcharge is an essential part of the electricity bill. So that it does not increase drastically, the federal government has stabilized the surcharge for the years 2021 and 2022 with taxpayers' money from the budget in the billions. The surcharge will be 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour in 2021 and 6 cents in 2022.

In the following years it was possible to reduce the surcharge to below 5 cents per kilowatt hour, it was now said.

Income from CO2 certificate trading and funds from the energy and climate fund are to be used for this purpose.

The aim is to relieve citizens and companies.

In the course of the EEG amendment passed at the end of 2020, the coalition agreed to define a further expansion path for renewable energies up to 2030 in the first quarter of 2021.

The background to this are new EU climate targets.

Above all, the SPD had spoken out in favor of significantly higher expansion targets for green electricity.

No agreement on species protection rules for wind turbines

There were delays in negotiations in the coalition.

One of the reasons for this was that the Union's negotiators - Joachim Pfeiffer and Georg Nüßlein - had resigned from their positions or left the parliamentary group.

The coalition was unable to reach an agreement on a further expansion path for green electricity by 2030.

In addition, there is no substantial agreement on uniform species protection rules for the construction of wind turbines.

In the past few years, this had become one of the greatest obstacles to the expansion of wind power.

The environment ministers of the federal states are currently trying to develop such a framework.

The Federal Ministry of Economics under Peter Altmaier (CDU) is pushing for a solution, last week the Federal Environment Ministry of Svenja Schulze (SPD) also joined.

Its State Secretary for the Environment, Jochen Flasbarth, is now openly threatening to follow Altmaier's course with the state environment ministers: "If the negotiations on species protection standards do not come to a conclusion soon, we have to regulate this nationwide through an amendment to the Federal Nature Conservation Act," Flasbarth told SPIEGEL.

So far, the state ministers have not given in to pressure from Berlin.

They work on a solution in working groups; results are not expected before autumn.

The grand coalition is nonetheless satisfied with the result.

"Today's agreement ensures that the new federal government can continue where the current coalition has handed over the baton," said Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU).

SPD parliamentary deputy Matthias Miersch said: "With regard to longer-term stipulations on the expansion paths and changes in building law, opinions diverged too widely." Nevertheless, it was possible to set important impulses for the further expansion of renewables in the near future.

Union parliamentary group Vice Carsten Linnemann (CDU) spoke of further important steps to advance the expansion of green energy and at the same time relieve private households and the economy.

ssu / gt / mic / dpa

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-04-22

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