Germany needs gas plants and batteries for electricity backup, research finds

Germany should avoid a one-sided focus on new gas power plants to ensure electricity supply security at times of low solar and wind feed-in, and also include long-term battery storage facilities in its plans, researchers and analysts told business daily Handelsblatt. 

Battery storage should be included in the planned government tenders as soon as possible in order to ensure security of supply in a cost-effective and technology-neutral manner, said Bernd Weber, managing director of the think tank Epico. "A one-sided focus on gas-fired power stations would make the electricity system unnecessarily expensive." Analyst Hanns Koenig of Aurora Energy Research agreed that storage facilities should be included in the tenders, but cautioned that additional facilities would need to be able to supply electricity over long periods of time, and would thus cost much more than many existing projects. 

Additional electricity production capacity is seen as crucial to enable Germany to phase out coal as planned. As the country exits the most climate-damaging form of fossil fuel electricity generation and rapidly expands renewable energies as part of its efforts to build a climate-neutral economy by 2045, it must ensure supply security. Germany aims to build up alternative capacity which it can switch on at times when intermittent wind and solar energy are insufficient to meet demand – so-called “controllable capacity”. 

Following the preliminary green light from the EU to set up auctions for state support, the government has yet to present the details of its power plant security act. Critics have said that the economy ministry has focussed too much on gas-fired power plants and neglected the potential of battery storage facilities. Government sources told Handelsblatt that the government coalition partner SPD has blocked the act, calling for more room for storage. 

Battery storage units are the preferred option among German citizens for providing sufficient backup capacity to balance the variable output of renewable energy installations, a survey commissioned by industry group BSW Solar found. With an approval rating of 42 percent, batteries ranked well ahead of gas-fired power plants (17%), the government’s preferred option for providing backup capacity to the electricity system. Other options, such as biomass plants (32%) and hydrogen-fired power plants (31%) came in between the two in the ranking that allowed for multiple choices. 

“Battery storage is a central element of a cost-efficient, resilient and climate neutral energy system,” said BSW Solar head Carsten Körnig. Compared to gas plants, batteries are more quickly deployable, cause no direct emissions during operation and reduce power costs by making renewable energy sources and the power grid operate more efficiently, Körnig said, adding that the government must therefore ensure “fair competition that allows the most efficient and future-proof technologies to prevail” in the planned auctions. Disadvantaging batteries in the auctions would lead to higher costs and run counter to EU rules that stipulate full technology openness in the auctions, he said. 

BSW Solar’s call follows a report by news magazine Der Spiegel saying that the economy ministry under conservative minister Katherina Reiche asked energy company EnBW to provide it with arguments for a law reform that would prioritise gas power plants over batteries in auctions that are planned for the second half of 2026. 

EnBW then sent a list of arguments to contacts within the ministry at the time of negotiations with the EU in January 2026 that would pave the way for the auctions under state aid law, the article said. According to Der Spiegel, EnBW failed to declare its correspondence with the ministry in the national lobby registry.