Growth also in renewables
Germany uses significantly more coal to generate electricity
November 29, 2023, 4:42 p.m
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The good news first: Germany will achieve its goals for expanding renewable energies in 2022. On the other hand, significantly more of the climate killer coal was used to generate electricity – a consequence of the loss of natural gas deliveries from Russia.
In terms of electricity generation, according to the monitoring report by the Federal Network Agency and the Federal Cartel Office, the shortage of natural gas due to the end of gas imports from Russia and the resulting increased gas prices on the wholesale markets led to a decline in electricity generation from natural gas by a good 14 percent in 2022. In return, electricity generation from lignite-fired power plants increased by a good five percent, while that from hard coal-fired power plants was around 14 percent higher than the previous year.
Generation from renewable energies increased by around 8 percent in 2022 due to the strong expansion of wind and photovoltaic systems and strong solar radiation, according to the report. The share of electricity from renewable energies in gross electricity consumption rose to 45 percent, after it was 40 percent in 2021.
The legal expansion paths for onshore wind, photovoltaics and biomass were achieved in 2022. According to the authorities, this is no reason to relax efforts. “In order to achieve the increased expansion targets for 2030, even greater expansion is unavoidable,” explained the Federal Network Agency and the Federal Cartel Office.
When it came to gas imports the report According to Germany’s most important sources of supply in 2022, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium with a total volume of 983 terawatt hours. This corresponds to around 68 percent of all German gas imports. Müller emphasized that Germany still needs the planned liquid gas terminals in order to further diversify Germany’s gas sources.
Return to coal-fired power plants effective
In view of the increased coal-fired power generation, the Federal Network Agency reminded the Federal Government of its climate targets and called for greater efforts to expand renewable energies so that the Federal Government’s target of at least 80 percent of gross electricity consumption coming from renewables can be achieved.
“In order to prevent supply bottlenecks, the legislature has reacted with a temporary return of the coal-fired power plants and an extension of the service life of the remaining nuclear power plants in 2022. These measures have proven to be effective, but we must not lose sight of the climate goals,” warned Klaus Müller, President of the Federal Network Agency.
RWE dominates the electricity generation market
The President of the Federal Cartel Office, Andreas Mundt, also said that we need to take a look at the market dominance of individual companies in conventional electricity generation.
“Even if the market concentration here has declined again in 2022 after an increase in the previous year, it remains that RWE and some other producers are increasingly indispensable for meeting electricity demand,” said Mundt. “We must continue to monitor the market closely, especially since the importance of electricity imports for limiting the market power of domestic electricity producers has become greater, and in some cases essential.”
Overall, Germany-wide net electricity generation fell slightly in 2022 due to lower electricity consumption, according to the monitoring report.