Enlarge image
Economics Minister Habeck
Photo: FILIP SINGER / EPA
The current work of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck can be roughly divided into two areas.
In the first he is a kind of crisis firefighter.
He has to make pragmatic decisions that ensure that German industry does not stand still.
Habeck gets liquefied gas from Qatar, which is problematic in terms of human rights issues, plans a national coal reserve or nationalizes a German Gazprom subsidiary before the Kremlin quietly dissolves it.
These are actions that a Green politician can hardly please.
But they have been tying up a lot of his energy for months - and a large part of the public attention.
Then there is a second area that corresponds more closely to what Habeck actually wants to do: the expansion of renewable energies.
In the medium and long term, this area is much more important for the Federal Republic than firefighting operations.
Because the large amount of green electricity should not only make Germany more climate-friendly, but also geopolitically self-sufficient.
And he should later be the actual benchmark for the work of the Green Economics Minister.
A top-class group met in the ministry on Monday.
It included leading representatives of the German power grid and green electricity industry, two state secretaries, a department head - and Habeck himself. The question was how to overcome the multiple crises that are slowing down the expansion of renewable energies.
"Even if the government passes the best possible laws, not a single wind turbine has yet been built in Germany," Habeck later summed up at a short press conference.
The government's expansion targets must now be synchronized with the production capacities and the supply chains of the manufacturers.
And you have to make sure that the companies find enough financiers for their many new projects.
When it comes to expanding renewable energies, there is currently a wide gap between desire and reality.
By 2030, Germany's green electricity generation is expected to increase by 140 percent.
But how this is supposed to work is often a mystery, even to the companies involved.
The renewable energy sector - more precisely: the solar, wind and power cable manufacturers including all their suppliers - is in a rather deplorable state after the leaden GroKo years.
Far-reaching measures planned
The German wind power industry, which is expected to produce a significant proportion of future green electricity, has been severely weakened by excessive bureaucracy and government area restrictions.
And recently it has also been struggling with rising prices for raw materials such as steel.
Very few manufacturers produce systems on stockpile.
It often takes 15 months from ordering to delivery of a large wind turbine - which prevents wind power from ramping up quickly.
The production of solar cells and modules in Germany gradually collapsed after the boom years up to 2012.
And the few remaining companies have to pay high interest rates when they take out loans for new projects.
The manufacturers of power cables, on the other hand, suffer from stagnant supply chains for raw materials and intermediate products as well as from a shortage of skilled workers.
All this does not exactly mean that the green electricity industry is overflowing with euphoria - even if the demand for solar systems, wind turbines and power cables is likely to increase soon.
The government now wants to create more incentives for the industry.
The course must be set now so that the energy transition does not start to stutter next year due to supply bottlenecks, says Oliver Krischer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
To this end, far-reaching measures are under discussion, "from cheap loans to guarantees to state participation".
According to SPIEGEL information, the first possible projects are already emerging.
An offer from Meyer Burger to build a solar module factory with state participation in a former coal region by 2023 with an annual output of five gigawatts is under discussion.
In the future, the support provided by the state-owned KfW bank for offshore wind farms will also include the construction of the necessary foundations.
In addition, Habeck's people are considering a state-coordinated network to wire producers and buyers of green power plants more quickly.
In addition, it is being examined whether the construction of new wind turbines can still be enforced at some German locations until winter - by means of an emergency law.
These are just initial ideas and there will be many more to come.
Habeck's role as a crisis firefighter may be the more spectacular.
But his actual job – leading the German energy sector through a system change – is far more difficult.