BDEW: Energy transition to enter crucial stage only after next legislative period

Germany’s energy transition will face a critical phase after the next legislative period in 2021, according to the national utility association BDEW. “The real challenges lie between 2021 and 2030, when the nuclear exit has been completed and excess power capacities are drastically reduced," the lobby group’s head Stefan Kapferer told journalists in Berlin. Germany's last nuclear plant will shut down in 2022. “After that, we’ll have to see how fossil power plant capacity, which will still be needed for the foreseeable future, will be structured,” Kapferer said. Other crucial issues are building high-voltage transmission lines and electrifying the transport and heating sectors, he said. The BDEW expects wholesale power prices to pick up after 2022, he said. According to the BDEW, Germany's next government after September's elections had to prepare the right conditions for the critical 2020s. This meant hurdles for storage solutions and decentralised supply had to be lowered, taxes and levies on power reduced, and a modernisation of the heating sector made a priority, it explained.

For more information, see the CLEW dossier Vote2017 - German elections and the Energiewende.