Germany's logistics sector will need more electricity than steel and chemicals combined – report
Clean Energy Wire
Germany's logistics sector will require 186 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year by 2045, eight times today's level and more than the steel and chemicals industries combined, driven almost entirely by the electrification of road freight, according to a report by the RWTH Aachen University's Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika), commissioned by logistics industry association DSLV.
"The transformation of freight transport is not primarily a transport policy challenge, but an energy policy one," DSLV executive director Frank Huster said.
By 2035, the sector will consume nearly 110 TWh of electricity, more than four times the demand forecast for the steel industry and 60 percent above that of the chemicals sector, according to the report.
“Logistics is entering into direct competition with Germany’s most energy-intensive industrial sectors for grid capacity and affordable energy,” the association said.
Germany, famed for its industry and export prowess, is located at the heart of an increasingly integrated Europe. Transporting goods by road, rail, waterways and air today produces around a third of Germany’s total transport emissions, and freight volumes are expected to grow rapidly in the years to come.
The sheer scale of the projected demand reflects the pace of fleet electrification required under European Union rules. EU regulations require that 90 percent of all newly registered trucks be zero-emission by 2040, and the report's baseline scenario assumes high compliance with this target. Road freight alone accounts for 155.8 TWh – 84 percent of the sector's total projected electricity demand in 2045 – with logistics properties such as warehouses and cold storage facilities adding 22.3 TWh and rail freight a further 7.8 TWh.
The report also flags a peak power demand problem: When truck fleets charge at depots on winter weekday evenings, building energy loads rise and coincide with high rail demand. The combined peak logistics demand could therefore reach 57 gigawatts, equivalent to 70 percent of Germany's current total system peak. Rooftop solar on logistics properties could generate up to 20.5 TWh annually by 2045, but its share of total sector demand would actually fall from 24 percent today to just 11 percent, as electricity needs grow far faster than roof space.
DSLV called on the German government to accelerate grid expansion at all network levels, cut electricity taxes for the logistics sector to the EU minimum already available to energy-intensive industries, and remove regulatory barriers that prevent logistics sites from selling self-generated solar power to third parties such as delivery companies.