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Solar panels for your home
Photo: Rolf Poss / IMAGO
When Robert Habeck came to the house of the federal press conference on Wednesday afternoon, the stands were only sparsely filled with journalists.
What he had to announce was a small sensation: the new Federal Minister of Economics presented the first comprehensive package of laws for moving away from fossil fuels.
Instead of nuclear power, gas and coal, only electricity from wind, sun and biomass will soon flow through the German grid.
This goal is to be achieved in as little as twelve years.
By 2030, 80 percent of electricity generation should be renewable.
The traffic light government is keeping to what it promised in the coalition agreement - but now under the omens of the Ukraine war.
The extensive "Easter package" is also a politically important signal to show the green flag again after Minister Habeck's visits to the oil country Qatar.
The package, which was approved by the cabinet on Wednesday - subject to the FDP - is at first glance actually a big surcharge for a radical energy transition.
The 600 pages are about:
Expansion of offshore wind energy – not a
single turbine
was added
last year
Onshore wind:
Ten gigawatts
are to be added every year.
Last year, the increase
was less than two gigawatts
of output, the highest increase ever achieved was five gigawatts in 2017.
Solar energy is also set to go up: the annual expansion rate is set to increase to
22 gigawatts
– previously it was
always less than ten gigawatts
.
Facilitating the planning and construction of systems: In the future, wind turbines and solar systems will be
"in the overriding public interest"
- this means that there is no longer a general ban on building in nature reserves.
Municipalities should also be able to contribute financially.
Added to this is the reduction in bureaucracy and accelerated procedures in grid expansion, so that renewable electricity can be transported from the coast to the south, for example.
Habeck then wants to regulate further details with the so-called "summer package", which concerns, among other things, the designation of areas for wind farms.
That sounds good.
But is this already the big hit that Germany needs for its ambitious climate goals?
After all, German CO₂ emissions must fall by at least 65 percent by 2030 compared to 1990.
Germany now has exactly eight years and eight months to do this.
And around 320 million tons of greenhouse gases have to be eliminated in the annual balance - that is a reduction of 42 percent, as of today.
Continued expansion of fossil energies
Habeck received mostly applause for his Easter package – but it wasn't particularly euphoric.
And this despite the fact that climate experts have longed for exactly such growth paths for green electricity for years.
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"Everything is going in the right direction, but a clear answer to Russian oil and gas imports is still missing," comments Ottmar Edenhofer, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
"I don't have the European perspective here." The countries must now react together to the consequences of the war and, due to the rising energy prices, also think about compensation for the socially disadvantaged, Edenhofer said in a conversation with journalists on Thursday afternoon.
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Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck explains the energy transition
Photo: FILIP SINGER / EPA
Brick Medak, climate expert at the think tank E3G, also believes that the measures do not sufficiently address current events.
"The package does not manage to resolve the central contradiction in German climate and energy policy these days." The federal government continues to rely on "questionable alternatives such as LNG" - meaning liquid gas imports, for example from the USA.
"An ambitious summer package can only become a major climate policy step in combination with a timely end to all Russian energy imports and the renunciation of LNG," says Medak.
In fact, the fossil subsidies, i.e. the indirect production of gas and oil, continue - so far the government has not cut a cent there.
On the contrary: With the tank discount, it promotes this even further.
What about traffic and buildings?
Electricity production is also just one of the five sectors in which a lot has to happen by 2030: There are no proposals yet for industry, the transport sector, the building sector and agriculture.
But it is true that without the rapid expansion of renewables in the other sectors, nothing would work: industry needs green hydrogen instead of gas, cars and heavy goods vehicles need electricity or energy-intensive synthetic fuels, and the installation of heat pumps in houses also increases the demand for green electricity.
Without more wind and solar energy, there will be no progress in climate protection in other areas of Germany.
For environmental organizations such as the German Environmental Aid, it is incomprehensible why the government has so far only tackled the expansion of green electricity.
Everything has to be considered for the climate targets: "It is a gaping gap that the Easter package does not contain measures for buildings or transport - both sectors missed their climate targets last year," says Barbara Metz, Federal Managing Director of the DUH.
PIK boss Edenhofer also misses transport and buildings as important climate protection sectors - albeit at European level: »The government has so far failed to back the European Green Deal and to give the new emissions trading for transport and buildings the necessary support. «
The background: The EU Commission plans to reduce emissions in the building and road traffic sectors by 43 percent by 2030 compared to 2005.
To this end, she would like to introduce a separate emissions trading system and put a price on emissions from motor fuels and combustibles that are produced in road traffic and in buildings.
However, these plans are currently in jeopardy because some countries fear an even sharper price increase, including for gas.
Lack of skilled workers and space
With the package, the government did not turn the big wheel, but rather gave an impetus.
The Economics Minister himself knows that. His ministry is still struggling with completely different problems: Habeck pointed out the lack of skilled workers in the trades.
The German Economic Institute (IW) reported in January that Germany could be missing around five million skilled workers by 2030 because hundreds of thousands more are retiring than workers are moving up.
There is already a lack of competent energy consultants or experts for heat pumps and alternative heating systems.
Even if the legal basis is now in place: who should ultimately implement the energy transition?
Even the biggest bottleneck for the energy transition, the lack of space, has not yet been resolved with the legislative package.
The plan that countries should devote two percent of their land to wind energy is still controversial.
An agreement should come in the next package - but then it's the countries' turn.
It is not said whether Bavaria will then give up its blocking attitude.
A SPIEGEL research showed that if the regulations were as strict nationwide as in Bavaria, at least 71 percent of the wind turbines in Germany would not exist at all.
It also remains to be seen whether the CSU-governed state can be convinced or forced by Habeck.
Coalition crash and alleged brakes
Even within the coalition's own ranks, there is no consensus.
FDP parliamentary group deputy Köhler pointed out that the goal of a climate-neutral electricity system for 2035 was "not realistic", since the necessary climate-neutral gas-fired power plants with CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in Germany are just as impossible as the continued use of nuclear energy.
It is still unclear whether the package will find a majority in its current form.
The German Environmental Aid commented quite bitingly: The brakemen from the SPD and FDP had prevailed - "in crashing contradiction to the Climate Protection Act and the just published report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change".