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Is green electricity enough for e-cars?
No, says car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / dpa
It is a thesis with potential for excitement: In order to expand e-mobility as agreed by the SPD, Greens and FDP, a return to nuclear power in Germany is inevitable, according to calculations by car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. "If we take electromobility really seriously in Germany, we must not do without nuclear power plants," the Augsburger Allgemeine quoted as saying the head of the private Center Automotive Research (CAR). The auto specialist has written a strategy paper on this, which is also available to SPIEGEL.
"In order to keep the electric cars running in 2050, we would need 39,000 additional wind turbines compared to today," says Dudenhöffer.
That is not feasible.
The only way out is therefore to build new nuclear power plants, which are much safer today than in the past.
Nuclear waste is also easier to recycle in the meantime.
You can read that as a bet on the future - at least it's a steep thesis.
In fact, new nuclear power projects in other countries are plaguing fundamental problems, above all endless construction times and rapidly rising costs.
And the question of how to deal with the radioactive waste has de facto nowhere been satisfactorily clarified.
At the EU level, there is currently a dispute as to whether nuclear power should be classified as a sustainable form of energy in the future. The traffic light parties are sticking to the nuclear phase-out in their coalition agreement. At the same time, they set the goal of having "at least 15 million fully electric cars" on Germany's roads by 2030. According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, almost 310,000 of these vehicles are currently registered.
Is it possible that nuclear power really is needed for the rapid growth?
Dudenhöffer's calculation reveals at least some problematic points that cast doubt on this conclusion: The expert cites a forecast by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, in which an additional annual electricity requirement of 44 terawatt hours (TWh) for the year 2030 for car traffic in Germany up to the year 2030.
In his opinion, this value is far too low; in truth, the demand is three times as high.
As proof of his thesis, Dudenhöffer uses a calculation for 2050, i.e. 20 years later.
Only then is three times the amount of electricity required.
So the comparison doesn't fit - even if it makes sense to look at the following decades.
Offshore wind power is not considered
It is also difficult to make a statement about the additional wind turbines that are supposedly required: In order to get to the number of 39,000 required wind turbines, the expert calculates with today's onshore rotors.
These currently provide an average of around 1.9 megawatts per system.
It is also due to the fact that inefficient old systems are included in the calculations, but which are constantly being replaced by significantly more powerful units.
New wind turbines have an average output of 4 megawatts.
If this figure is taken into account alone, the number of additional wind turbines required would be halved - without taking into account that new systems work more efficiently and will probably become even more powerful in the future.
While Dudenhöffer refers to technical advances in nuclear power ("Research and innovations make nuclear power plants appear in a new light"), he does not take into account an analogous development in wind power. In addition: offshore wind power does not even appear in the calculations. The coalition agreement provides for the - very ambitious - target of 30 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030. To put it into perspective: So far there are 7.7 gigawatts.
If one assumes, however, that this goal will actually be achieved, the following rough calculation can be made: Assuming the systems run for 3000 hours per year - a very conservative assumption - the additional offshore systems add up to a total of 65 terawatt hours. In other words, in this scenario, the power of the sea wind alone could cover the electricity needs of electromobility per year.
However, Dudenhöffer's study points to a fundamental problem: In general, electricity demand in Germany will increase significantly.
In the future, industry and homes will also be increasingly dependent on climate-neutral electricity - for example, to manufacture chemical products without natural gas or for heating.
Numerous studies assume that Germany also has to import electricity.
However, given the low production costs for green electricity, nuclear power plants should not be necessary either domestically or abroad.
With material from Reuters
