Proposed grid access reform could slow Germany’s energy transition at difficult moment – SPD energy expert
Clean Energy Wire / Tagesspiegel Background
Plans by Germany’s economy ministry to curb priority grid access for renewables have been criticised for risking to slow the energy transition at a time when fossil fuel dependencies increasingly become a geopolitical liability, the governing Social Democrat Party's (SPD) parliamentary group speaker for energy, Nina Scheer, said. Scheer's comment was made in response to a leaked draft law proposing reforms on the remuneration of future renewable projects.
“The draft bill does not meet the requirements of the coalition agreement,” said Scheer about the proposal coming from the ministry led by economy minister Katherina Reiche from the SPD's coalition partner, the conservative Christian Democrat Union (CDU). The agreement between the two parties had been “to utilise the full potential of renewable energies, ensure efficient grid utilisation and synchronise grids with renewables, while at the same time securing investment security and European value creation,” Scheer argued.
An economy ministry spokesperson told Tagesspiegel Background that discussions were ongoing as part of a set of measures "to better synchronise the expansion of renewables and grids" as announced in the ministry's energy transition "reality check" monitoring report last year. The CDU-led ministry previously said that it regards expanding renewables in a grid-friendly way as key to lowering the energy transition's costs.
Future expansion of renewable power sources should be done in a “grid-friendly” way to ensure all electricity produced can be used, and new capacity is added where it makes sense, economy minister Katherina Reiche said when presenting the monitoring report in 2025. The report had pointed to numerous measures aimed at lowering costs, for example improving the coordination between areas of high output or of high demand, and ensuring that options to make electricity demand more flexible benefit the power system.
Priority grid access is a cornerstone of Germany's Renewable Energy Act (EEG), requiring grid operators to prioritise connections for renewable projects and purchase their power, a guarantee that underpins investor confidence and project financing, the renewables industry said. Power market analysts have in the past pointed at the importance of combining state support mechanisms with a market-driven expansion.
Energy industry association BDEW said the energy industry would require sufficient consultation time to assess the grid package, in particular around future remuneration when renewable sources have to be turned off because of grid bottlenecks. Under the proposal, in areas where more than three percent of the previous year's electricity generation could not be fed into the grid, renewable investors would only be granted immediate grid connection if they waive compensation for future curtailments for up to 10 years.
Germany’s renewable energy federation (BEE) said that the plans “could lead directly to energy shortages and rising prices,” and argued that there are other ways to align renewable and grid expansion.
The head of energy retailing start-up 1KOMMA5, Philipp Schröder, criticised the proposal that renewable energy projects are to pay grid fees, especially considering no electricity generator in Germany currently does so. “The most cost-effective solution, namely to respond with flexible grid fees and intelligent feed-in and consumption to reduce costs for everyone in the long term, remains unused,” Schröder wrote in a LinkedIn post.