“The Energiewende needs a new consensus”

Germany lacks an overarching general concept that includes all sectors for contributing to emissions reduction, energy economist Marc Bettzüge writes in a guest commentary for Handelsblatt. “There is no integrated incentive and refinancing mechanism” to advance energy transition in the transport and heating sector apart from expanding renewable energy sources via the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), Bettzüge says. Additionally, resistance to the surcharge-based EEG “is growing from different directions”, he argues. Without a far-reaching societal consensus on future measures, “the ‘Energiewende’ will get stuck in trench warfare about more and more detailed single activities”, Bettzüge says. He adds that Germany’s next government needed to pursue a more inter-European approach, reform the country’s power market and, if necessary, revise the climate targets.

Read the article in German here (behind paywall).

For background, see the CLEW factsheet From ideas to laws – how Energiewende policy is shaped.

Please note: The Clean Energy Wire will publish a factsheet on this topic later today.