EU Commission Recommends German Energy Shift

September 23rd, 2013 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on the Lenz Blog
by Karl-Friedrich Lenz

The German government just published a report on recommendations from the EU Commission about the costs of the German energy shift (in German). Thanks for this Beck news item for the link.

The first thing one needs to note about this kind of “recommendation” is the fact that it comes without legal binding force. It is not for the Commission to decide on German energy policy. That will be something the new government will need to address, once we have one after the elections coming up Sunday.

That said, the Commission thinks that Germany should keep the costs of the energy shift down. There is nothing wrong with that in principle. All things equal, having lower costs is preferable to having higher costs.

However, I disagree with this comment from the Commission:

Greifbare Ergebnisse, die Kosten der Energiewende auf ein Minimum zu beschränken, stehen nach Auffassung der EU-Kommission noch aus. (In the view of the Commission, there are still no concrete results for keeping the costs of the energy transition to a minimum, my translation).

That comment completely disregards the fact that most of the costs come from systems already installed over the last decade. New solar installed this year will only raise the surcharge by 0.07 cents for the 4 GW capacity expected. That’s EUR 2.45 a year at 3,500 kWh average consumption. That’s a concrete result, and it is very significant, since most of the solar necessary to get to the 80% renewable electricity in 2050 goal still has to be built in the future at these rock-bottom prices.

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Tags: EU Commission, german, German energy shift, Germany

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Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. :D

JamesWimberley

Readers should note that the German EU Energy Commissioner, Günther Oettinger, is a right-wing CDU politician just as hostile to renewables as the FDP. The Commission´s paper was a transparent intervention in the German election in favour of the FDP. It failed and Oettinger will now shut up.

The claim that the costs of the Energiewende aren´t under control is laughably wrong, as anyone who has looked at a chart of the trend in PV installation costs in Germany knows very well.
Matt

Interesting that they didn’t recommend that Germany cut the break it has be giving to big and increasing any corporation on their electric bill. Or the issue that wholesale prices for electric has dropped while retail has not.
Ivor O’Connor

Seems like political posturing. Without knowing the political landscape it is hard to tell what is really going on.