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Unless Germany quickly phases out coal-fired power generation, diesel cars will continue to be better for the climate than e-cars, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in an interview. For this reason, Germany will need diesel cars ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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Hundreds of coal workers in the eastern German region Lusatia welcomed the country’s coal exit commission during a trip to the region with protest banners saying, “good jobs are being trampled on,” Michael Bauchmüller writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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Germany faces fines to the tune of two billion euros by 2020 for failing to meet emissions reduction targets in sectors not covered by the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), Andreas Mihm writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The German ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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Though Germany has championed the use of clean energy, the country is struggling with the phase-out of lignite, one of its most important energy sources to date, writes Michelle Hackman in an article in the Wall Street Journal. It is an energy source ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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A majority of Germans want the federal government to do more for climate protection, according to a representative survey by public broadcaster ARD, conducted by Infratest dimap. 74 percent of respondents said the government should do more, 22 percent ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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A survey commissioned by price comparison website Verivox has found that almost one in five Germans says people should pay higher power prices in order to facilitate investments in the decarbonisation of the energy system. In the survey with over 2,000 ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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Germany needs a national strategy to boost walking as the most basic, quiet and emission-free form of mobility, according to the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The agency says the potential to increase walking is large because a fifth of all distances ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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The increase in the wholesale market price for electricity in 2018 has led to a reduction of the so-called “market premium” that renewable power suppliers like wind and solar PV installations receive as a guaranteed payment, the German Renewable Energy ...
News Digest Item | 12 Oct 2018
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A large moorland fire, which had been caused accidentally during a military exercise in northern Germany more than a month ago, has been extinguished, reports public broadcaster NDR. According to a German army (Bundeswehr) spokesperson, pictures taken by ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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The economy minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Andreas Pinkwart, has proposed to allocate coal power plants a certain amount of electricity they are allowed to produce before they have to shut down instead of deciding a set date for ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed a hard-fought EU environment minister compromise deal for a 35 percent cut in new car emissions by 2030, reports news agency Reuters. “(There is) a revisions clause for 2021, since the question of how fast we can ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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The ministers’ agreement on EU car CO₂ emissions limits would “mark no less than the end of the car industry as we know it,” writes Markus Fasse in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt, adding that it would basically push combustion engine cars out of the ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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The first smart meter in Germany has received a license from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) two years after the government decided on a large-scale roll-out, Jakob Schlandt writes in energy policy newsletter Tagesspiegel Background. The ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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German household power prices will remain largely unchanged in 2019 as higher grid fees and wholesale prices outweigh a dip in the surcharge paid for the roll-out of renewable energy sources. The German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) expects the ...
News Digest Item | 11 Oct 2018
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Wednesday, 10 October, 2018- 17:18 Two days after the UN's latest IPCC report on global warming urged greater international efforts against climate change, the German parliament saw a heated debate about the implications for Germany. While the Green ...
News | 10 Oct 2018
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The Berlin administrative court has ordered Germany’s capital to introduce driving bans for diesel vehicles on parts of eight roads suffering from exceedingly high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) pollution, reports the public broadcaster rbb24 in two ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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Key elements of the German government’s diesel deal have become “practically worthless” within a week, writes Nils-Viktor Sorge in a “chronology of failure” on Spiegel Online. Many carmakers continue to reject hardware retrofits, while trade-in incentives ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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German economy minister Peter Altmaier will present a new consortium of companies on 13 November to tackle domestic battery cell production, reports Alfons Frese in the Tagesspiegel. Manufacturer VARTA Microbattery and carmaker Ford Germany will be part ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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The plans for wind power expansion in Germany are “illusory” since the growing density of turbines across the country is set to diminish the yield per installation so much that power production targets can no longer be met by simply increasing the number ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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Courts in Germany and other European Union countries are posing a growing challenge to governments and business interests regarding climate change in recent months, reports Rick Noack in The Washington Post. Examples include an appeals court in the ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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The Federal Environment Agency (UBA) has submitted its considerations regarding a future long-term climate plan for the European Union. The EU is currently preparing its respective mid-century long-term climate strategy, which would drag Europe’s economy ...
News Digest Item | 10 Oct 2018
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Electricity storage is next feat for Germany’s energy transition 10 Oct 2018- 9:00am Germany's rapidly rising share of weather-dependent renewable energy makes the country a testbed for storage technologies, to enable its use when there is no sun or ...
Dossier | 10 Oct 2018
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The energy transition offers plenty of opportunities for German businesses, but the current government coalition has done little to solve key issues for the industry, writes the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) in its 2018 ...
News Digest Item | 09 Oct 2018
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The conservative government of western German coal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is considering rethinking its energy policy and to formulate “ a new basic approach to coal ”, Kirsten Bialdiga, Reinhard Kowalewsky und Thomas Reisener write in the ...
News Digest Item | 09 Oct 2018
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The ruling by a German court to stop the clearing of the embattled Hambach Forest has prompted energy company RWE to consider reducing coal extraction at its nearby lignite mine by up to one third, Claus Hecking and Stefan Schultz write on Spiegel Online. ...
News Digest Item | 09 Oct 2018
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Germany’s decision to phase-out nuclear power and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time is posing difficulties for the country, which will miss its 2020 CO 2 reduction targets, Paola Tamma writes on Politico. Both the IPCC’s new 1.5 degree ...
News Digest Item | 09 Oct 2018
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According to environment ministry calculations, Germany would have to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 62 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, to meet the requirements laid out by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...
News Digest Item | 09 Oct 2018
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Monday, 8 October, 2018- 16:58 Anti-coal activists in Germany and beyond experienced a sudden change in fortune on 5 October, when a court ruling boosted their cause and provisionally stopped plans of energy company RWE to cut down the embattled Hambach ...
News | 08 Oct 2018
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The embattled Hambach Forest could turn out to become a symbol for Germany’s acclerated coal exit as much as the nuclear disaster in Fukushima became a symbol for the country’s accelerated nuclear exit, Jürgen Flauger writes in a commentary for ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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Environment and climate policy “ do not take place ” in Germany under the current grand coalition government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD), writes Michael Bauchmüller in an opinion piece ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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Many companies in Germany have understood that a more sustainable way of making business will dominate the economy of the future, Green politician Julia Verlinden writes in a guest commentarty in the Frankfurter Rundschau. But some of the country’s ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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The support of German citizens for the country’s Energiewende [energy transition] is unwavering, a poll commissioned by the country’s Renewable Energy Agency (AEE) and conducted by pollster Kantar Emnid has shown. According to the AEE, 93 percent of ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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The planned Russian-German natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, currently under construction in the Baltic Sea, can contribute to German power supply security during the country’s coal exit, said coal commission co-head Ronald Pofalla during a speech at ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, released today, shows the urgent need for ambitious climate action, according to the German government. In a press release, environment minister Svenja Schulze said the key message of the report is that ...
News Digest Item | 08 Oct 2018
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5 Oct 2018- 4:52pm Bavaria, the picture-book state with its rich green alpine landscapes, Walt Disney-inspiring Neuschwanstein Castle, Oktoberfest and champion football club FC Bayern Munich boasts the highest amount of installed capacity of solar PV, ...
Factsheet | 05 Oct 2018
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Friday, 5 October, 2018- 14:30 The surge of far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a strong showing of the Green Party look set to end the absolute majority of conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavarian state elections on 14 October. The ...
News | 05 Oct 2018
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Nearly 100 civil society organisations from across the world – including Greenpeace International, Banktrack, 250.org, Climate Action Network and E3G – have sent a joint letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, urging her to intervene in the escalating ...
News Digest Item | 05 Oct 2018
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The exceptionally hot and dry summer 2018 in Germany and large parts of Europe has led to a shortage of biogas plants like maize, for which crop yields in some regions have fallen by 50 percent, making the production of biogas more expensive, Andreas ...
News Digest Item | 05 Oct 2018
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An increase in extreme weather events like storms, floods and snow pushed up the average electricity blackout time in Germany last year. The average interruption per power consumer rose to 15.14 minutes from 12.80 minutes in 2017, according to the Federal ...
News Digest Item | 05 Oct 2018
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Friday, 5 October, 2018- 17:00 Clearing operations at the embattled Hambach Forest to make way for a coal mine have to be halted to decide whether the forest is protected by EU environmental rules, a German court has decided. The judges said energy ...
News | 05 Oct 2018
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Car drivers, politicians and the car industry itself all fell for the diesel engine’s supposed fuel efficiency but were deceived, because making them clean with expensive hardware retrofits will push up fuel consumption, writes Martin Murphy in a ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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The quarrels in Germany’s coal exit commission over a proposed end date for coal-fired power production in 2038 will continue to weigh on the country’s reputation as a progressive energy transition advocate, Thorsten Preuschgas, CEO at solar power project ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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Energy company RWE plans to dig a ditch around the embattled Hambach Forest to prevent anti-coal protesters from entering the area, the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes. An RWE spokesperson said work on the ditch had already begun but added that it was not ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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Wind turbines in Germany should not be illuminated throughout the whole night as this would gravely impede the acceptance of wind power by local residents, the conservative CDU’s deputy parliamentary group leader Carsten Linnemann told the Frankfurter ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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Germany’s additional auctions for wind and solar power have been planned too late to have a meaningful impact on the country’s climate action record or on the smooth expansion of renewable capacity in the country, Daniel Wetzel writes in an opinion piece ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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The dual phase-out of nuclear and coal power in Germany means the country has to increasingly rely on natural gas to complement its power production from renewable sources but unlike other major European countries, the world’s second largest gas importer ...
News Digest Item | 04 Oct 2018
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Thursday, 4 October, 2018- 17:11 Germany’s government has decided to reduce emissions from diesel cars in polluted cities by swapping old models for new ones and retrofitting some older cars. Transport minister Andreas Scheuer and environment minister ...
News | 04 Oct 2018
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Environmental organisations that are trying to set up a large-scale protest against the clearing of the Hambach Forest say up to 20,000 people could find their way to the small forest near Cologne, the Rheinische Post reports. Protest organiser Uwe Hiksch ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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The Green Party in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is adamant about holding its party convention at the embattled Hambach Forest. “We as Greens want to send a message and support the peaceful resistance” against energy company RWE ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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The price for heating oil in Germany has reached its highest level in several years, price comparison website Check24 says in a press release. At 1,537 euros per 2,000 litres, heating oil in September 2018 cost 8 percent more than in the month before and ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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Producing carbon-neutral coffee is a possibility that is already being tested in Central America and could be made even more efficient if producers adopt certain strategies in their farming methods, agricultural science researcher Athena Birkenberg of ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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Germany’s coalition government has reached an agreement to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from diesel cars in German cities. Transport minister Andreas Scheuer and environment minister Svenja Schulze called the deal “a very large step” to improve ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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After several hours of negotiations on diesel emissions and immigration, the federal government coalition also agreed that it would decide to implement special renewables auctions “to contribute to closing the gap in the 2020 climate target” in a cabinet ...
News Digest Item | 02 Oct 2018
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Thursday, 4 October, 2018- 14:16 The financial sector in Germany needs better regulation to fully incorporate sustainability criteria in its business practices, says Kristina Jeromin, head of sustainability at the German stock exchange Deutsche Börse and ...
News | 04 Oct 2018
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The European Commission has given up plans to tighten the European emissions reduction goal for 2030 ahead of the UN climate conference COP24 in Katowice as member states did not voice sufficient support for the ambitious target to reduce CO 2 levels by ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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The German wind industry has lauded the international optimism regarding the renewable energy source at the global fair WindEnergy Hamburg but complained that the interest of German politicians in this growth sector has faded. Nearly 1,500 exhibitors from ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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Aligning lending standards of development banks with the Paris Agreement’s emissions reduction targets would help achieve a quicker and more sustainable modernisation of the recipient countries’ economies, according to a working paper by NGO Germanwatch. ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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Municipal utility NEW from western Germany will join the growing ranks of e-car manufacturers, Florian Rinke writes in the Rheinische Post. The small utility has invested about 2.5 million euros in the company Share2Drive from Aachen, which has developed ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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Germany’s energy policy has not lived up to its climate and renewables expansion targets and has failed to adequately integrate citizens in planning procedures, Simone Peter of the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) and Stefan Kapferer of the German ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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About 10,000 people gathered at the Hambach Forest over the past weekend to again protest against the forest’s clearing to make way for a nearby coal mine, the Rheinische Post reports. At a protest event on Sunday, environment expert Peter Wohlleben told ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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The German government is working on a concept to reduce emissions from diesel cars in German cities which will include swap and retrofit options, said transport minister Andreas Scheuer during a live video chat on Instagram. “We are currently talking ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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The first day-ahead auction on the EPEX SPOT power exchange after the split of the common power price zone between Austria and Germany, which becomes effective today (1 October), saw higher prices for Austria than Germany, writes the Austrian Energy ...
News Digest Item | 01 Oct 2018
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Friday, 28 September, 2018- 15:37 Germany's solar power industry used to be a leader of the renewable technology's global expansion but a series of political blunders has killed off solar power companies and passed the torch on to China, solar ...
News | 28 Sep 2018
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Friday, 28 September, 2018- 12:24 Germany still lacks an overview of the total cost of the Energiewende and the government must improve cost transparency, efficiency and coordination of the energy transition in order to keep citizens’ trust, the Federal ...
News | 28 Sep 2018
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German chancellor Angela Merkel wants to make battery cell production a “ strategic European development ”, she said during a speech at an event on e-mobility in Berlin. “Someone like me, who once studied physics, is incredibly sad that we cannot produce ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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German police prepare the clearing of the last known tree-house holdout in the embattled Hambach Forest near Cologne to enable energy company RWE to continue expanding its nearby coal mine, the Rheinische Post reports. One activist was injured during a ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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A quick end of coal-fired power production in Germany and a parallel expansion of wind and solar power capacities would reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to meet the 2020 and 2030 climate target in line with the Paris Agreement, a study by research ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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Energy industry association VGB Power Tech says that the guaranteed capacity of German wind power is less than one percent of the 56 gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity in the country, Klaus Stratmann writes in the Handelsblatt. According to the ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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The global transformation towards a decarbonised energy system has positive effects for human security, such as reducing the dependence on fossil resources supply chains, strengthening the access to energy as an economic factor, and thus increasing ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag has introduced a draft law that would make international climate goals and obligations, as well as the nuclear exit, binding under German Basic Law. In a plenary debate, Green group leader Anton Hofreiter ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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Carmaker VW will accept hardware retrofits for manipulated diesel cars that have lower exhaust levels on the test stand than on the road, Gerald Traufetter writes on Spiegel Online. According to the article, Germany’s largest carmaker is the first in the ...
News Digest Item | 28 Sep 2018
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Thursday, 27 September, 2018- 13:57 Germany needs to have a rational and open public discussion about carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and storage (CCS) as ways to avoid releasing climate-harmful emissions from industry into the environment. A ...
News | 27 Sep 2018
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German environment minister Svenja Schulze’s decision to back away from her call for more ambitious new EU CO₂ car emissions limits is “a defeat for the climate, and for the industry – once again – a Pyrrhic victory,” writes Michael Bauchmüller in an ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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Daimler has named research chief Ola Källenius as its next CEO in a succession plan that promotes a raft of tech-savvy managers at its Mercedes-Benz car brand and also seeks to install long-serving CEO Dieter Zetsche as chairman, writes the news agency ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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The governments of France and Germany have entered into an unusual alliance with BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment fund, to achieve progress in unlocking private capital for investments in climate action, Astrid Dörner and Peter Köhler write in ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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As of 1 October, three more lignite power station blocks in Niederaußem and Jänschwalde will be mothballed and moved into the so-called security standby reserve, dpa news agency reports. After four years in the reserve, the units will be retired for good. ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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According to the wind industry, German turbine operators supported under the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) should be able to sell their electricity directly to companies, reports Klaus Stratmann in the Handelsblatt. Until now, renewable electricity supported ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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It is technically feasible and may also be economically beneficial for Europe to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, says a report published jointly by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and Climact. However, reaching this goal ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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German environment minister Svenja Schulze has backed away from her call for more ambitious new EU targets for passenger car CO₂ emissions reduction to enable a joint German government position, said a ministry spokesperson at a press conference. After a ...
News Digest Item | 27 Sep 2018
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Thursday, 27 September, 2018- 10:04 Germany’s farmers, just like their fellow citizens working in other sectors, must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to enable the country to adhere to the national and international climate targets. But curbing emissions ...
News | 27 Sep 2018
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Wednesday, 26 September, 2018- 13:53 The German Football Association (DFB) has included a sustainability concept in its bid to host the 2024 European Football Championship. While the plan lacks concrete goals for action, awarding the tournament to Germany ...
News | 26 Sep 2018
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A sober look at German carmakers and utilities reveals that their constant talk about sustainability is not backed up by actions, writes Bert Fröndhoff in a commentary for the business website Handelsblatt Global. The car industry provided the best ...
News Digest Item | 26 Sep 2018
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Microsoft has announced it will partner with German utility E.ON to develop a smart home platform to manage everything in a house that runs on electricity, report Jürgen Flauger and Christof Kerkmann in Handelsblatt Global Edition. The partnership will ...
News Digest Item | 26 Sep 2018
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Wednesday, 26 September, 2018- 13:14 The German Football Association (DFB) has included a sustainability concept in its bid to host the 2024 European Football Championship. UEFA is set to select the host country this week. The DFB says it wants the ...
News | 26 Sep 2018
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Tuesday, 25 September, 2018- 14:33 Europe needs a common standard for sustainable finance and investment regulation to ensure that the financial sector contributes to the transition to a low-carbon economy, financial industry representatives said at a ...
News | 25 Sep 2018
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As members of the coal exit commission met in the central German mining district of Saxony-Anhalt with local employers, politicians, and NGO representatives, Saxony-Anhalt’s state premier, Reiner Haseloff (CDU), reminded the commission members that they ...
News Digest Item | 25 Sep 2018
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As climate change exacerbates existing conflicts and has a destabilising effect on countries and entire regions, the German government aims to “counter climate risks as part of a preventive and stabilising foreign policy,” said foreign minister Heiko Maas ...
News Digest Item | 25 Sep 2018
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Germany’s transport minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) has presented his proposal to reduce emissions from diesel cars in German cities to the chancellor and the heads of carmakers BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler, Daniel Delhaes, Markus Fasse, and Martin Murphy ...
News Digest Item | 25 Sep 2018
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The prevailing mood at the WindEnergy Hamburg international trade fair shows how the industry is reinventing itself: the era of subsidies is coming to an end, Kathrin Witsch writes in the Handelsblatt. “We expect that power purchase agreements (PPAs) will ...
News Digest Item | 25 Sep 2018
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The German government has postponed a decision on the hardware retrofitting of manipulated diesel cars, saying it plans to come to a conclusion by the end of the last week of September, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. “We want to make a decision soon,” ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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In Germany, electric cars could cost the same as cars with conventional engines by 2025, Henning Kagermann, head of the country’s new “ National Platform Future of Mobility ” says in an interview carried by the energy policy newsletter Tagesspiegel ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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Several thousand people gathered over the weekend at the embattled Hambach Forest in western Germany to protest against the expansion of a nearby coal mine and the forest’s clearing, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reports. According to the organisers ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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German energy company RWE will breach the law if it continues to press ahead with the clearing of the Hambach Forest in western Germany to expand its nearby lignite mine, environmental NGO Greenpeace says in a press release. According to a legal opinion ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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Rising German power prices pose significant difficulties for the country’s famous “Mittelstand,” the large number of small and medium-sized companies that are a crucial part of Germany’s industrial production chain, William Wilkes and Brian Parkin report ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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Luxury carmaker Porsche will no longer produce cars with diesel engines and will instead focus on expanding its product range with electric or hybrid vehicles, the German company has said in a press release. Porsche said it did not want to “demonise” ...
News Digest Item | 24 Sep 2018
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Friday, 21 September, 2018- 16:19 Germany will miss its climate targets for the building sector if it continues to neglect efficiency because of the increasingly tight housing market, environmental NGOs and efficiency associations warn. The climate action ...
News | 21 Sep 2018
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The German government has to carefully moderate the many differing interests in order to successfully make security policy implications of climate change a key topic during its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, writes ...
News Digest Item | 21 Sep 2018
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German steel company thyssenkrupp has started production of the synthetic fuel methanol from CO₂ and other emissions in steel production, the company says in a press release. The fuel production from side products of steel smelting is part of the so ...
News Digest Item | 21 Sep 2018
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The German Energy Agency (dena) has gathered a group of companies from the energy, automotive, aviation, chemicals and mineral oil, mechanical and plant engineering, insurance and finance sectors to launch a global alliance for power fuels. The list of ...
News Digest Item | 21 Sep 2018
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Not cutting down the embattled Hambach Forest would cost four to five billion euros, Rolf Martin Schmitz, head of energy company RWE, which wants to clear the forest to expand a nearby lignite mine, said in the political talk show Maybrit Illner on ...
News Digest Item | 21 Sep 2018
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Thursday, 20 September, 2018- 18:33 Energy minister Peter Altmaier has announced new plans to accelerate the expansion of Germany’s power grid, which is behind schedule but vital to the growth of renewable power production. The majority of new connections ...
News | 20 Sep 2018
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The government of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has stopped the clearing of anti-coal activist camps in Hambach Forest “until further notice” after a journalist fell to his death, writes Der Tagesspiegel. “We cannot simply return to business ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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Seventy-nine projects with a total capacity of around 77 megawatt have been successful in Germany’s second round of tenders for biomass plant, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) said in a press release. This represents a significant increase of awarded ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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Germany will have generated as much solar power in the first three quarters of 2018 as in all of 2017, writes the German Solar Association (BSW) in a press release. “2018 will be a record year for solar power,” writes the association. BSW managing ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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Minimum energy performance standards for rental buildings can help increase the rate of deep renovations, and they can be an important instrument for combating energy poverty, according to a paper by the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) and ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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German wind power "will see a brief decline in 2019", but growth of the onshore sector is expected to normalise from 2020, writes the Commerzbank in its market assessments of the wind energy market. “We continue to observe a robust global ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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Germany’s energy minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) wants to “make a pact with the states” and present a law to accelerate the building of new power lines, he told Funke Mediengruppe ahead of today’s Grid Summit with the states’ energy ministers in Berlin. ...
News Digest Item | 20 Sep 2018
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Wednesday, 19 September, 2018- 15:20 The German government has launched a new advisory panel to reduce transport emissions in line with national climate targets. The task force will broaden the focus of an earlier panel concentrated on electric cars, to ...
News | 19 Sep 2018
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Germany will initiate a domestic battery cell production in the framework of the federal government’s upcoming industrial strategy, said economy minister Peter Altmaier at a press conference after a meeting with Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission ...
News Digest Item | 19 Sep 2018
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Germany will choose where to build its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal by the end of 2018 as a gesture to the United States, which wants to ship more gas to Europe, economy minister Peter Altmaier said after a meeting with Maros Sefcovic, the ...
News Digest Item | 19 Sep 2018
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Tuesday, 18 September, 2018- 18:50 The country’s coal exit commission said there were no predetermined decisions regarding a date for the end to coal-fired power generation. Following irritation about reports of a supposed compromise on a 2038 end date, ...
News | 18 Sep 2018
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The speedy start of the coal exit is more important than finding a final end date, writes the Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU), an expert advisory panel to the government focussing on environmental protection, in a statement. “For the climate, ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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The outcome of the struggle over the embattled Hambach Forest, which German energy company RWE wants to cut down to make way for the expansion of a lignite mine, will have “profound significance for the future of energy in Germany, as well as for climate ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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German carmaker Audi has presented its first all-electric model “e-tron”, which is obviously designed to be an answer to Tesla’s success, writes Tom Grünweg for Spiegel Online. Daniel Bönnighausen argues on EV website electrive that the car is the very ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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Hardware retrofitting of older diesel cars would be “an economic waste of tax money or carmakers’ money”, writes Daniel Delhaes in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt. The retrofits would take years, when driving bans are already being introduced, and the ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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German utilities' financial situation is stabilising after years of difficult transformation, writes consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “The restructuring introduced because of [the energy transition] shows positive effects. The projected ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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Offering municipalities financial incentives for building new power lines needed for the energy transition does not change the acceptance rate of the local population, according to a study by Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI Essen ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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Ahead of the G7 environment, energy and ocean ministers meeting in Halifax, Canada, humanitarian relief organisation CARE published a comprehensive analysis of the finance provided by the G7 group to developing countries for climate change adaptation and ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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The German hydrogen electrolysis sector must become a “gigawatt industry” for Germany to reach its climate targets, according to a new study by Fraunhofer ISE, Fraunhofer IPA and E4tech, commissioned by the federal transport ministry (BMVI). The ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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Governments need to raise carbon prices much faster if they are to meet their commitments on cutting emissions and slowing the pace of climate change under the Paris Agreement, according to a OECD report. In a separate press statement, Lukas Köhler, ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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Germany’s coal exit commission must deal with the question of new jobs for workers in the lignite regions before looking for an end date for coal, according to economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier. “We need a restructuring plan for each lignite ...
News Digest Item | 18 Sep 2018
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In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Kerstin Schwenn, German minister of transport Andreas Scheuer, a member of the conservative CSU party, said the retrofitting of millions of diesel cars to make them cleaner and reduce emissions ...
News Digest Item | 17 Sep 2018
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A report about a proposal by one of Germany’s coal commission co-heads for a coal exit by 2038 has caused irritation. Co-chair Ronald Pofalla also proposed taking 5-7 gigawatts of coal capacity off-line and into a security reserve by 2020, and ...
News Digest Item | 17 Sep 2018
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Monday, 17 September, 2018- 10:30 A report about a proposal by one of Germany’s coal commission co-heads for a coal exit by 2038 has caused irritation. Some commission members were quick to reject the report and warned that the commission's work was ...
News | 17 Sep 2018
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The start of evictions of anti-coal activists in the Hambach Forest “has already done enormous damage to the image of [energy company] RWE”, which could turn into a veritable “disaster” once the company starts cutting trees in October, Jürgen Flauger, ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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German energy company RWE may be legally entitled to proceed with the expansion of its lignite mine near the Hambach Forest and to have police remove protesters, but the conditions that led to RWE’s license for expansion “have changed dramatically,” ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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The apparent preparation of clearing operations in the Hambach Forest is a sad event for many environmentalists who have hoped to preserve the old trees for years, but they should keep their focus on making progress in Germany’s coal exit commission, ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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The need for reform in German energy policy is “piling up” under the current grand coalition government, said Oliver Krischer, deputy leader of the Greens parliamentary group in a plenary debate on the economy and energy budget for 2019. Economy minister ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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German carmakers might have been late to embark on the electrification of passenger cars, but, according to a recent study by patent law office Grünecker, “are very well positioned when it comes to e-transporters and e-trucks,” Thomas Fromm writes for the ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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In an opinion piece, David Reay reacts to the op-ed on liquefied natural gas (LNG) by US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell and US deputy secretary of energy Dan Brouillette in the Handelsblatt on 13 September. “The pair offers up a shameless ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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Electric trucks with low noise emissions could be used in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) for night-time deliveries in inner cities, which would also reduce traffic volumes during the day, the Rheinische Post reports. NRW transport minister ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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The development of power prices in Germany will have a big impact on the lifespan of wind turbines that are more than 20 years old and therefore no longer offer the guaranteed electricity price to investors mandated by Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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The conflict over coal-mining expansion in the Hambach Forest, where police have started evicting anti-coal activists, is becoming an issue that could threaten the stability of Germany’s coal exit commission, news website Spiegel Online writes. Commission ...
News Digest Item | 14 Sep 2018
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Europe and Germany should “share in America’s abundance” and cooperate with the US in energy policy by buying natural gas from America, the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, writes together with US deputy secretary of energy Dan Brouillette in a ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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The German government is preparing the launch of a commission tasked with finding measures to make buildings more energy efficient and bring down carbon emissions in the heating sector, Susanne Ehlerding writes in the energy policy newsletter Tagesspiegel ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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The regional municipality association Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) mulls selling its shares in German energy company RWE as “grave changes on the energy market” mean that “the time of big plant operators is over,” Welt Online reports. LWL ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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German economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier has rebuffed opponents of the planned SuedLink power transmission line by reportedly not joining a planned meeting in the economy ministry (BMWi), Heinz Wraneschitz writes in the pv magazine. Critics also ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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The last factory of Germany’s former solar power champion SolarWorld in the eastern German state of Saxony has ceased production, Frank Hommel writes in the newspaper Freie Presse. “The last remaining materials have been used up, the last solar panel has ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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One of Germany’s largest wind farm operators, wpd AG, is buying up old wind farms that are about to reach the end of their 20-year guaranteed remuneration period to operate the turbines without renewables support, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. “We ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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The city of Berlin will double the support paid to entrepreneurs that decide to buy an electric car, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The so-called buyer’s premium for commercial vehicles will be raised from 4,000 euros, paid for by the federal ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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Police in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have started clearing the anti-coal activist camp in the embattled Hambach Forest, the Rheinische Post reports in a live blog. Police set up a perimeter around the forest and started ...
News Digest Item | 13 Sep 2018
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The plenary debate in the German Parliament about Germany’s 2019 budget for environmental policy on 12 September centred on the country’s coal exit. Referring to the current situation in the embattled Hambach Forest, which energy company RWE wants to cut ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv) together with auto club ADAC will file a class action lawsuit against Volkswagen for “intentionally and immorally causing harm to and betraying customers with software manipulation” to obfuscate its ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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Increasing the admissible maximum weight of freight trucks from 40 to 44 tonnes could save “millions of truck rides” and reduce carbon emissions in Germany’s transport sector, the German Chemicals Industry Association (VCI) says in a press release. ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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The German energy industry is utterly unsatisfied with the government’s energy policy track record after the first six months in office, Michael Bauchmüller writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “We’re lacking someone to set the pace in policymaking,” says ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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Germany would close about half of its coal-fired power generation capacity by 2030 on economic grounds alone if the price of EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowances remained above its current level of 25 euros per tonne of CO₂, economist Andreas ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the country’s most populous state and home to numerous emissions-intensive heavy industries, has launched an initiative to examine options for bringing down industry’s carbon footprint, the NRW ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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The slow pace of progress in the negotiations on a rulebook for the Paris Climate Agreement is “deeply worrying,” and industrial countries must both help configure global climate policy in a socially responsible way and do their own homework, write ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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The German economy and energy ministry (BMWi) has commissioned a study of the country’s options for capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions to lower its carbon footprint, Manuel Berkel writes on Spiegel Online. According to the article, energy ...
News Digest Item | 12 Sep 2018
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German energy company RWE and environmental organisations have met to discuss the situation in the embattled Hambach Forest that energy company RWE wants to cut down to make room for a nearby coal mine, reports Spiegel Online. RWE head Rolf Martin Schmitz ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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Fears of a surge in support for the right-wing populist party AfD must not influence the speed of Germany’s coal exit, Berlin’s Green energy senator Ramona Pop says in a reply to Brandenburg’s state premier Dietmar Woidke, published in the Tagesspiegel. ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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The modernisation and decarbonisation of Germany’s heating sector has enormous carbon emissions reduction potential that needs to be tapped more, the energy minister of the German coal state of Brandenburg, Albrecht Gerber, says in an article carried by ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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The state of South Australia wants to build the world’s largest network of connected home power storages and counts on German solar battery maker sonnen to deliver part of the infrastructure for the project that will encompass 40,000 households, the ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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The non-governmental Global Climate Action Summit in California brings together representatives of private companies and cities from around the world and adds pressure on the German government and the European Union to step up their efforts to comply with ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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The more equally power costs are allocated among the population, the more willing German power customers are to finance the changes associated with the energy transition, a study conducted by the research institute RWI and published in the Nature Energy ...
News Digest Item | 11 Sep 2018
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Experts commissioned by the German federal government at the diesel summit in 2017 agree that diesel vehicle hardware retrofitting is an effective measure to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. However, they are ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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Opposition to wind power expansion in Germany is gaining clout, as shown by a new video spot, with which the German Wildlife Foundation (Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung) has entered the campaign before the upcoming state elections in Hesse, writes Daniel ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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Having received state support for twenty years through the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the German wind power industry “still cannot stand on its own feet,” writes Andreas Mihm in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In the current ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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Germany is already connected to liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals in neighbouring countries, but the government “is working on advancing the [LNG] infrastructure in Germany itself,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a German-Qatari ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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German bilateral cooperation such as with the state of California in the USA is “a good recipe to implement a sustainable and dependable energy system quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently,” said state secretary Thomas Bareiß in a statement ahead of a ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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It is “feasible” that the UN climate summit in Katowice in December (COP24) will produce an agreement on implementation guidelines (also called rulebook or work programme) to the Paris Climate Agreement, Germany’s negotiator Nicole Wilke from the ...
News Digest Item | 10 Sep 2018
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A new study by WWF Germany and Foundation 2° examines the effects of a “below two degrees climate path” on economic risks and opportunities for companies in the automobile and chemical industries. Businesses must include climate and energy targets in ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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A price on CO₂ in Germany would bring a push in innovation from which German companies could profit in international competition, Ottmar Edenhofer, designated director of The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), told Spiegel in an ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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German energy company RWE has secured a “substantial annual capacity” of a planned German terminal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), reports news agency Reuters. RWE reached an agreement with LNG Terminal GmbH, the joint venture that aims to build ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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Many investors increasingly doubt that further investments in fossil power plants make sense and ask for ever more detailed justifications, for example regarding the modernisation of old facilities, writes WirtschaftsWoche in a long article. This could ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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A group of seven countries – comprising France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Greece, Ireland and the UK – have issued a common position on the reform of Europe’s electricity market, saying “strategic reserves” for electricity should not receive favourable ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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As wind power generation starts to take off internationally, companies from the former global lead market Germany are set to close down parts of production at home and move jobs closer to growth markets, Brian Parkin and William Wilkes write for Bloomberg ...
News Digest Item | 07 Sep 2018
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Qatar Petroleum, the world’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG), is in talks with German energy companies about cooperating on a potential LNG terminal, writes Mathias Bruggmann in an article in Handelsblatt. “We have a serious interest in ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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German economy minister Peter Altmaier has said that Poland and Germany plan a cooperation on battery cell production, reports Spiegel Online. The production could be located in the eastern German lignite mining region Lusatia and western Poland, writes ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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Transitioning to efficient and zero-emissions road freight transport will significantly reduce European spending and dependence on oil imports and spur economic growth, the European Climate Foundation and Cambridge Econometrics say in a report backed by ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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Implementing pathways away from coal-fired power production in line with the Paris Climate Agreement is feasible in the major coal-using economies within 20 to 30 years, according to a comparative study on six countries, including Germany, Australia, ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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The European Commission had approved, in a February state aid ruling, Germany’s security standby of lignite plants scheme, and said that future rules on the design of the EU electricity market would not influence this ruling. The Commission now says this ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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The western German city of Frankfurt must introduce a ban on older diesel vehicles as part of a plan to improve air quality, the Federal Administrative Court ruled, reports news agency Reuters. The country’s financial centre must from February 2019 ban ...
News Digest Item | 06 Sep 2018
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German carmakers are the main culprits behind the problems with emissions, writes Nikolaus Doll in an opinion piece for Die Welt. “Not all, but important companies have lied, deceived and in the end will not manage to comply with the future limit,” Doll ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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Advantageous regulations, decreasing overall costs, a wider offer of different models and increased demand mean that e-mobility is on the verge of breakthrough in Germany, according to consultancy McKinsey. Similar to the developments in the solar PV ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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Police forces in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have moved into the embattled Hambach Forest that energy company RWE wants to cut down to make room for a nearby coal mine, the Rheinische Post reports. On Twitter, police said they ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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The state government of Brandenburg plans to increasingly regulate what it sees as excessive wind power expansion to ensure the continued acceptance by the population, writes Benjamin Lassiwe in Lausitzer Rundschau. State premier Dietmar Woidke said he ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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In Art & Coal, a major exhibition in Germany’s Ruhr region, artists explore the 900-year-old culture of coal mining as the country’s last two mines prepare to close, writes Sunaina Kumar in an article for the online art magazine and blog website ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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New car registrations in Germany increased significantly in August 2018 – 25 percent compared to the same month in 2017 – due to the introduction of the stricter Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) at the beginning of September, ...
News Digest Item | 05 Sep 2018
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The German coal exit commission will debate the impact of the rising price for EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowances in its upcoming meeting on 18 September, report Claus Hecking and Stefan Schultz in a lead story on Spiegel Online. Volatile prices ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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Germany’s energy supply security must not depend on the support of other countries, Thomas Bareiss, state secretary in the economy and energy ministry (BMWi), said at a conference on energy and climate policy organised by newspaper Die Zeit in Berlin. ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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The European auto industry is questioning existing and future EU car fleet CO₂ emission limits, reports news agency dpa in an article carried by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Our industry is worrying about whether we’ll be able to reach the 2021 target ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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German power transmission grid operator TenneT has started laying the first underwater kilometres of NordLink, a direct power connection between Norway and Germany, the company announced in a press release. Over the coming months, TenneT will lay 99 ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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Andreas Pinkwart, economy minister of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state and home to one of three German lignite mining regions, has called for a CO₂ tax on oil and gas to ensure that power consumers do not have to shoulder all of ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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It is futile to hope that the German government will officially propose the introduction of a “climate passport” at the upcoming UN climate conference COP24 in Katowice, Poland, writes Joachim Wille in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Rundschau. In a ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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Enak Ferlemann, parliamentary state secretary in the transport ministry (BMVI), said that today’s form of e-mobility with batteries is only a precursor to drives based on hydrogen fuel cells, writes Olaf Preuss in Die Welt. Hydrogen made with offshore ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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Daimler-owned Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen’s Audi and BMW will all unveil new electric cars in the coming days in a “German onslaught against Tesla’s dominance of the fast-growing market for premium battery cars”, report Esha Vaish and Laurence Frost for ...
News Digest Item | 04 Sep 2018
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The criticism of the Green Party’s climate policy by Andrea Nahles, leader of the SPD, Germany’s junior government coalition partner, has led to consternation and objections by the Greens and environmental groups. NGO Greenpeace said in a mailed ...
News Digest Item | 03 Sep 2018
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The investments made by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany in recent years have started to pay off and reduced the companies’ exposure to high power prices, German state-owned business development bank KfW said in a press release. ...
News Digest Item | 03 Sep 2018
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The climate talks in Bangkok must lead to tangible results that make this year’s COP24 UN climate conference in Poland a success, NGO Germanwatch says in a press release. “Robust rules for the Paris Climate Agreement, improved climate goals for countries ...
News Digest Item | 03 Sep 2018
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Chinese solar panels will no longer be subject to trade controls such as minimum prices in the European Union, the European Commission announced in its official journal. The trade restrictions, introduced in 2013 to shield the European Union’s solar power ...
News Digest Item | 03 Sep 2018
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Armin Laschet, premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s largest federal state, is not willing to act as a mediator in the negotiations between environmental activists and the energy company RWE over the clearing of a forest near the Hambach ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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The designated new economy and energy minister of the German federal state of Brandenburg, Jörg Steinbach, is likely to keep the pro-coal stance of his predecessor, Albrecht Gerber, who announced his resignation on 21 August citing private reasons, Igor ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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Due to its apparent lack of will to achieve a consensus, the mandate of Germany’s coal exit commission should be annulled and the government itself should find a consensus on how to end coal-fired power production in the country, Angela Hennersdorf writes ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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Climate policy must take into account all the affected people, empower them, hold those responsible for climate change accountable, and create both global and national prospects for the future, according to the German Advisory Council on Global Change ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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German environment minister Svenja Schulze backs Chancellor Angela Merkel position on the European Commission’s proposal to raise the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target. “We have set goals for 2020, which we will not reach. To then say ‘we will set ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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Chinese car producer Chery prepares for entering the European market with a purely electric car produced near Frankfurt in Germany, Hendrik Ankenbrand writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Chen Anning, CEO of the state-owned Chinese carmaker, said ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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The commission tasked with planning Germany’s coal exit could extend its negotiations well into 2019, although it is scheduled to deliver ideas for quick emissions reduction and an end date for coal-fired power production by December this year. According ...
News Digest Item | 31 Aug 2018
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In the row over the expansion of a lignite mine and the clearing of a nearby forest, German economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier said that “solutions can only be found through negotiations and talks, and not in public debates,” news agency Reuters ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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Germany’s environment minister Svenja Schulze has reiterated her opposition to the clearing of Hambach Forest for the expansion of a nearby lignite mine while the country’s coal exit commission discusses the end of the fossil fuel in Germany, the ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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The head of German energy company RWE’s workers’ council, Harald Louis, says activists in the embattled Hambach Forest who are trying to prevent the expansion of a nearby coal mine are “blackmailing” the company by using the country’s coal exit commission ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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Exiting coal-fired power production will be the litmus test of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s climate policy record, write Bloomberg’s Brian Parkin and William Wilkes. “Merkel will want a credible end date for coal to burnish her reputation as a ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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German economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier will discuss options for closer cooperation with its neighbour Poland on battery cell production for electric cars, Welt Online reports. On a working trip to Poland next week, Altmaier will meet the Polish ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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Contrary to the German government’s promise to close the gap towards reaching the country’s 2020 climate target as much as possible and take steps towards reaching the 2030 target, it “ is doing nothing," Malte Kreutzfeldt writes in an opinion piece ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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Several German federal states have revamped their approach towards the energy transition and climate protection. In a joint initiative, the states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate are calling for a reform of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) to speed ...
News Digest Item | 30 Aug 2018
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Tuesday, 4. September 2018- 9:02 Germany commissioned its 100,000th home storage battery last week – and the boom is far from over, says Detlef Neuhaus, CEO of German solar PV module and residential battery storage system maker Solarwatt. Neuhaus warns ...
News | 04 Sep 2018
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A household near Berlin has commissioned Germany’s 100,000 th residential battery storage system. At an official ceremony, state secretary Thomas Bareiss called the threshold an “ important milestone ” for the country’s energy transition. “Storage systems ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Cheating on fuel efficiency by major carmakers is responsible for 264 million tonnes of additional CO 2 emissions between the years 2000 and 2017, an analysis by NGO Transport & Environment has shown. The additional cost of fuel amounted to nearly 150 ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Germany’s largest carmaker still has to invest a lot of effort in the US to regain the trust that it lost after it was revealed in 2015 that the company cheated on emissions tests on a large scale, Jack Ewing writes in the New York Times. A report ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Forest protection has played an important role in the history of Germany’s Energiewende, or energy transition, and the current developments at the Hambach Forest, which is under threat by the expansion of a lignite mine, could end up as another example in ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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The city of Berlin has urged Germany’s coal exit commission to work towards a quick end of coal mining and power production in Lusatia, Jakob Schlandt writes in energy policy newsletter Tagesspiegel Background. In a letter to the commission’s leaders, ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Russian gas company Novatek and Belgian group Fluxys, a natural gas transmission system operator, are planning to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the German Baltic port city of Rostock, Andreas Meyer writes in the Ostsee-Zeitung. According ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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The construction of wind power plants in the German state of Hesse could upset fans of Grimms' fairy tales as one of their stories’ favourite locations, the Reinhardswald, could become a wind farm location, Güven Purtul writes on Worldcrunch. While ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Developers of smart meters are complaining that the German state’s licensing of the technology is taking much too long due to security concerns and increasing the risk that the country will fall behind its European neighbours, many of which are much more ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Germany will have to actively lobby to make climate change and its security policy implications a key feature of its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Susanne Dröge writes in a commentary for the German Institute for ...
News Digest Item | 29 Aug 2018
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Friday, 31 August, 2018- 13:36 With its vast amounts of hydro energy, many would like Norway to become Europe’s “green battery”, supplying neighbours with steady power when there is little wind or sun. An extreme heat wave and dry weather in the first ...
News | 31 Aug 2018
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Tuesday, 28 August, 2018- 13:59 The expansion of a lignite mine that threatens a nearby forest has become a first touchstone of the German coal exit commission’s robustness. But despite fears that the row over the embattled Hambach Forest could gravely ...
News | 28 Aug 2018
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The concentration of harmful nitrogen dioxide (NO 2) emissions are above the legal limit in 116 cities and municipalities in Germany, NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) says in a press release. The NGO’s analysis included 41 cities that so far had not ...
News Digest Item | 28 Aug 2018
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The “market slump” in the German wind power sector, which continues to lead to job cuts at manufacturers and suppliers, is caused by government regulation, writes the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) in a press release. “On the one hand, the federal ...
News Digest Item | 28 Aug 2018
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The expansion of wind power generation in northern Germany is meeting resistance from politicians and environmental organisations alike, Welt Online reports in two separate articles. In north-eastern state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, politician Eckhardt ...
News Digest Item | 28 Aug 2018
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Industrial companies in Germany have invested 8.4 billion euros in 2016 in more sustainable technology that reduces, avoids or removes emission from environment, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) says in a press release. The figure equals about ...
News Digest Item | 28 Aug 2018
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The German energy industry is optimistic and sees itself well prepared for the future, financial services company KPMG said in its Future Readiness Index 2018. While its future readiness is "solid", it is currently facing only the beginning of a ...
News Digest Item | 28 Aug 2018
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Germany’s environment minister, Svenja Schulze, has weighed in on the dispute between environmental groups and energy company RWE over the expansion of a lignite mine and the clearing of a nearby forest, tagesschau.de reports. “If we want to achieve a ...
News Digest Item | 27 Aug 2018
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A price on carbon emissions from fossil fuels could help to drastically reduce the cost of Germany’s renewables surcharge for customers and effectively accelerate emissions reduction in the country, according to an expert opinion commissioned by the ...
News Digest Item | 27 Aug 2018
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When CO 2 prices rise to over 50 euros per allowance under the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), even lignite plants will struggle to remain profitable, writes Daniel Wetzel in an article for Die Welt. However, these plants, which are always ...
News Digest Item | 27 Aug 2018
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German e-car pioneer Günther Schuh, founder of the successful e-van company StreetScooter and inventor of the new compact e-car e.GO Life, says he is “optimistic” that there will be more than one million electric cars on the country’s roads by 2022, two ...
News Digest Item | 27 Aug 2018
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In an interview with public broadcaster ARD, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the proposal for a more ambitious EU greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030 by Miguel Arias Cañete, commissioner for climate action and energy. “I am not so happy ...
News Digest Item | 27 Aug 2018
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The German government will support hardware retrofitting for large municipal diesel vehicles in certain polluted cities, such as garbage or street cleaning trucks, writes the transport ministry (BMVI) in a press release. This could affect at least 20,000 ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Renewable energy financing by the Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, a bank that provides refinancing for agriculture and rural areas, plummeted in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period last year, the bank said in a press release. “Changes in ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Germany will have to consider installing small new gas power plants in the 2020s to ensure power supply security as the country’s coal exit progresses, Patrick Graichen, head of the think tank Agora Energiewende*, told Georg Ehring in an interview with ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) addresses the global coal phase-out in a new, short, overview policy brief. The main measures to help phase out coal are the abolishment of fossil-fuel subsidies, the introduction of ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Devising a plan for Germany’s coal exit through a commission is a tough job with many pitfalls for policymakers, Cecile Boutelet reports for Le Monde. Coal region Lusatia in eastern Germany is one example of a place “where the contradictory narratives of ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Germany’s cyber crime agency in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) warns that attacks on energy providers in the country could lead to a Europe-wide blackout, news website Spiegel Online reports. According to an internal BKA document seen by Spiegel ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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The German government is still a long way from finding a common position on future EU car fleet emission limits, report Till Hoppe and Silke Kersting in the business daily Handelsblatt. German car makers’ works councils and the top brass of metalworkers’ ...
News Digest Item | 24 Aug 2018
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Thursday, 23 August, 2018- 18:15 Germany’s coal commission will not give any recommendation regarding mining-owner RWE’s plans to continue clearing forest for the planned extension of the Hambach lignite mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The ...
News | 23 Aug 2018
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Monday, 27 August, 2018- 14:30 Germany’s current boom in residential solar batteries has profound effects on the Energiewende (energy transition), says Kai-Philipp Kairies, director of technical consulting at RWTH Aachen University, one of Germany’s ...
News | 27 Aug 2018
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A pilot project in the city of Hamburg tests how container ship pollution in ports could be reduced by propelling them with electricity via mobile generators powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), reports the public broadcaster NDR. The LNG PowerPac, a ...
News Digest Item | 23 Aug 2018
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Almost a quarter of German households are “actively participating” in the Energiewende by using technologies such as solar PV systems, battery storages, e-cars, or heat pumps, according to the “Energy Transition Barometer 2018” published by state-owned ...
News Digest Item | 23 Aug 2018
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The European Commission’s proposal to raise the EU’s 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target from 40 percent to 45 percent relative to 1990 levels is misguided, Federation of German Industries (BDI) Deputy Director Holger Lösch says in a statement. ...
News Digest Item | 22 Aug 2018
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With just one exception, all cruise ships operating in Europe are powered by heavy fuel oil, “the dirtiest of all fuels,” according to a new ranking from Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), the organisation writes in a press release. Newly ...
News Digest Item | 22 Aug 2018
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A combination of lack of transparency and denial of legal protection means that German power grid fees cannot be sufficiently checked by consumers, consumer organisations, or even politicians, according to a legal analysis published by the Regulatory ...
News Digest Item | 22 Aug 2018
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Several citizens’ and environmental groups in Germany have reiterated their call for a standstill agreement on lignite mine expansion until the speed and scope of the country’s coal phase-out has been determined, Ralph Jansen writes in the Kölner Stadt ...
News Digest Item | 22 Aug 2018
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Thursday, 23 August, 2018- 11:30 The German coal exit commission has set out on a tight schedule to devise a plan for phasing out the fossil power source – but shortly before its third official meeting federal states and opposition politicians have ...
News | 23 Aug 2018
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Tuesday, 21 August, 2018- 15:33 The projected rise in CO2 prices in Europe could see coal-fired power plants being replaced by gas plants in Germany, thereby saving millions of tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions and helping the country to achieve its ...
News | 21 Aug 2018
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German energy company RWE has rejected calls for a moratorium on forest clearing as part of lignite mining during its negotiations with the country’s coal exit commission, and said it would continue mining operations at the controversial Hambach mine, the ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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In order for Germany to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, a rapid phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation is needed across the country, but especially in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), according to a report published by ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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Coal-fired power generation does not have a future in Germany’s energy transition, write the environmental NGO WWF Germany and the green power provider LichtBlick in a joint report, seen by the Clean Energy Wire. In their report “Dead end coal – Why coal ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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The most important political decisions in Germany cannot be made by directives but must be earned by reconciling antagonist factions in society trough compromise and consideration, Thorsten Knuf writes in a commentary for the Frankfurter Rundschau. “This ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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The European Union will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45 percent by 2030 if the new targets for renewables expansion and energy efficiency are fully implemented, according to the European Commission’s calculations outlined to the news ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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Lowering energy costs is one of the most important goals for Germans in the Energiewende, according to the “Stiebel Eltron Energie-Trendmonitor 2018” report, seen by the Clean Energy Wire. Seventy-two percent of the respondents in the representative ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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The Russian government has said it is ready to resist "illegal" attempts to intervene in the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project that it plans together with Germany, as the US government has reiterated its ...
News Digest Item | 21 Aug 2018
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A quarter century after Germany published its first Climate Action Report in 1993, environmental groups give the country bad marks on its efforts to follow through on the promises made in the seminal document, news agency dpa reports in an article carried ...
News Digest Item | 20 Aug 2018
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel makes a “huge mistake“ when she argues that the question of ending coal-fired power generation should only be dealt with after ensuring the economic future of the affected workers, Green Party co-head Annalena Baerbock told ...
News Digest Item | 20 Aug 2018
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Germany should invest more money in climate protection in other parts of the world by, for example, buying rain forests, Christian Lindner, head of the economic liberal Free Democrats, told the news site t-online.de, according to an article in the ...
News Digest Item | 20 Aug 2018
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The debate between politicians and scientists in one of Germany’s most popular political talk shows – Anne Will – makes clear that this year’s heat wave and resulting draught is unlikely to fundamentally change Germany’s climate policy, writes Joachim ...
News Digest Item | 20 Aug 2018
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German car manufacturers Daimler and Volkswagen are facing new headaches in the so-called dieselgate scandal: according to reports, the former has to recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles on the orders of the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), ...
News Digest Item | 20 Aug 2018
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Saturday, 18 August, 2018- 20:13 Russia and Germany are set to proceed with the completion of a second natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea between the two countries. At a meeting with Russian President Putin near Berlin, German Chancellor Merkel ...
News | 18 Aug 2018
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Each federal ministry must come up with a plan to help achieve the country’s 2030 climate goals by the end of 2018, Environment Minister Svenja Schulze writes in a guest article for Tagesspiegel Background. The federal government’s climate protection law, ...
News Digest Item | 17 Aug 2018
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The average support rate for new onshore wind power projects has slightly increased in Germany’s third auction in 2018, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) said in a press release. Average support climbed to 6.16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), from 5.73 ...
News Digest Item | 17 Aug 2018
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Thursday, 16. August 2018- 16:59 While touring critical power grid projects in northern Germany, energy minister Peter Altmaier also faced a troubled wind industry that fears its golden years in the country are over. Under pressure from workers and local ...
News | 16 Aug 2018
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16 Aug 2018- 2:01pm The natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, currently under construction under the Baltic Sea, has been the subject of heated debate for years. The project, scheduled for completion in late 2019, would allow additional Russian gas to flow ...
Factsheet | 16 Aug 2018
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Germany’s failure to reach its 2020 climate targets “is an ominous signal for other nations struggling to reach their own targets,” write William Wilkes, Heyley Warren and Brian Parkin in an article for Bloomberg. “Other nations are looking at how Germany ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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The Social Democratic Party (SPD), the junior partner in Germany's coalition government, has criticised Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), for failing to take action on ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has announced the next round of auctions for solar and wind power installations in Germany. In a press release, the agency said the auctions, with a capacity of 670 megawatts (MW) for wind and 182 MW for solar power, ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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The software updates offered by VW for diesel cars affected by emissions manipulation are completely inadequate to reduce the vehicles’ pollution levels to below legal limits, according to Environmental Action Germany (DUH). “We don’t need ‘Mickey-Mouse ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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Big cities around the world have a special and urgent responsibility to press ahead in the fight against global warming, Berlin’s Green energy senator Ramona Pop says in a guest article for the Berliner Zeitung. If the federal government fails to give the ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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T ravelling in the renewable- energy stronghold state of Lower Saxony, German energy minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) faced urgent calls to provide a secure framework for future wind power growth. Lower Saxony’s environment minister, Olaf Lies (SPD), said ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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A Greenpeace-commissioned study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology posits that Germany can still meet its 2020 emissions reduction target, provided that several brown-coal-fired power plants are ...
News Digest Item | 16 Aug 2018
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German energy minister Peter Altmaier is “going all out” with his new “Power Grid Action Plan” to make the country’s grid fit for the growing volume of renewable energy sources – and rightfully so, because grid expansion has become the decisive bottleneck ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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Germany's unusually hot summer has dealt a blow to the country’s wind power output, with the yield in July 2018 being 20 percent lower than in the same month last year, Jürgen Flauger and Kathrin Witsch write in Handelsblatt. While solar power plants ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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German wind turbine maker Nordex has booked a fall in revenue and earnings, but its order books swelled in the first half of the year, reports Craig Richard in Windpower Monthly. Sales dropped 36 percent to 957 million euros, while adjusted earnings ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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Just 20,000 people in Germany are still employed in the once-mighty coal sector but their influence on energy policy is far greater than their number would suggest, Felix Heilmann writes for Climate Home. Coal workers are well-organised and good at ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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The German Green Party wants to write climate protection into the country’s constitution, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. At a Green campaign event in the central German federal state of Hesse, where state elections will take place on 28 ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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On a visit to communities affected by new grid development, German energy minister Peter Altmaier said the transition to an energy system based largely on renewables was a project for the whole community that couldn't be implemented by going over ...
News Digest Item | 15 Aug 2018
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Low wholesale power prices and higher prices for CO 2 emission allowances are weighing on Germany's lignite plant operators’ balance sheets, according to an evaluation of the energy information service Tagesspiegel Background, Der Tagesspiegel ...
News Digest Item | 14 Aug 2018
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As Germany’s coal exit commission uses the summer to devise a plan for the end of coal-fired power production in the country, eastern German lignite mining company MIBRAG has welcomed its 1,000th trainee since the company was formed in 1995. “We need ...
News Digest Item | 14 Aug 2018
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Germany on Saturday, 18 August to discuss the controversial gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the New York Times reports. Apart from talks about the ongoing conflicts in ...
News Digest Item | 14 Aug 2018
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Tuesday, 14 August, 2018- 14:31 Technical fixes, better communication and smoother planning procedures are to accelerate Germany’s grid expansion, the energy minister has proposed in a new plan. Heading off on a visit to contested power line building ...
News | 14 Aug 2018
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The heat wave gripping Germany has seen households and businesses across Germany purchase record numbers of air conditioners, RP Online reports. The Fachverband Gebäude-Klima (FGK), an association with 300 member companies active in the building and ...
News Digest Item | 13 Aug 2018
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Businesses including Daimler, Audi, Caterpillar, Bosch, and energy company ENBW, are teaming up with scientists in the state of Baden-Württemberg to explore the potential for, and large-scale production of, synthetic fuels, the Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
News Digest Item | 13 Aug 2018
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Twenty municipalities along the planned route for HVDC (high-voltage direct current) transmission lines to carry wind power from northern Germany to industrial centres in the south, have requested they be constructed as overhead cables rather than buried ...
News Digest Item | 13 Aug 2018
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The German government should put in place “clear incentives” to reduce CO 2 emissions, said Utz Tillmann, director of German chemical industry association VCI, in an interview with Tagesspiegel Background. The fledgling government has delayed policy ...
News Digest Item | 10 Aug 2018
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Most German biogas plants capable of producing power according to demand are not making use of this flexibility because the spread between base and peak prices at the wholesale market is not large enough, the German government said. The response came in a ...
News Digest Item | 10 Aug 2018
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Sixty-eight percent of respondents to a survey for ZDF-Politbarometer believe the hot weather this summer was a result of climate change. The figure is up from 48 percent who replied to the same question in 2015. In 2018, 28 percent believed the hot ...
News Digest Item | 10 Aug 2018
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Thursday, 9 August, 2018- 14:07 Record-breaking temperatures and a prolonged drought have increased public pressure on Germany’s coal-exit commission to make climate change mitigation its top priority. Countless media reports are invoking the extreme ...
News | 09 Aug 2018
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A 2-billion-euro fund should be created to assist German cities in the adaptation to climate change, Annalena Baerbock, chairwoman of the Green Party, says in an interview with the Neue Ruhr Zeitung. This money could be used not only to make agriculture ...
News Digest Item | 08 Aug 2018
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The exceptionally sunny weather in Germany is lavishing owners of solar panels with a lot of money, according to an article published on Welt Online. However, the rate of remuneration varies widely: those who installed solar panels in the early 2000s ...
News Digest Item | 08 Aug 2018
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7 Aug 2018- 5:46pm Rail freight, one of the potentially most climate-friendly modes of cargo transportation, is having a hard time to increase its clout in Germany's export-driven economy. Technical difficulties, red tape, and the twists and turns of ...
Factsheet | 07 Aug 2018
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GEOMAR is a marine research institute based in Kiel, Germany. Operating in all ocean basins, the institute specialises in climate dynamics, marine ecology and biogeochemistry, and ocean floor dynamics and circulation. It is affiliated with the University ...
Expert
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LMBV redevelops and designs the successor landscapes of lignite mines in both the region of Lusatia and central Germany. Belonging completely to the federal government, LMBV improves the water quality of opencast mining lakes, stabilises opencast slopes, ...
Expert
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Bottlenecks in the delivery of electric cars are causing customers to have to wait up to a year for their new vehicles, according to an article published in Der Tagesspiegel. The delays stem from the conversion to a new emissions test called the Worldwide ...
News Digest Item | 07 Aug 2018
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The electric utility of Frankfurt an der Oder, a city located on the German-Polish border and not to be confused with Germany's banking capital Frankfurt am Main, has joined its Cottbus counterpart and decided to replace its coal-fired cogeneration ...
News Digest Item | 07 Aug 2018
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The surcharge German power customers pay with their power bill to finance the expansion of renewable energy is going to remain largely stable next year, according to calculations made by the energy policy think tank Agora Energiewende*. The renewables ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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German reinsurance company Munich Re will no longer invest in companies that make more than 30 percent of their revenues from coal-based operations, CEO Joachim Wenning said in a guest article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Climate change is a ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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In the face of one of the hottest and driest summers ever recorded in Germany, the Green Party is calling for an aid fund worth at least two billion euros to provide financial resources for climate change mitigation across the country, the party says in a ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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Due to the slow progress made in modernising Germany’s power grid to cope with the large number of renewable energy installations, energy politician Jens Koeppen of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party says the country should stop wind power ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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The extreme summer of 2018 in Germany and most of Europe has prompted climate change deniers to hastily announce that the exceptional heat and drought are merely normal weather phenomena and do not testify to the human effect on the global climate, ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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Germany’s finance minister and vice chancellor Olaf Scholz has shot down a plan by environment minister Svenja Schulze to introduce ambitious emissions reduction standards across the EU in order to meet the climate targets agreed on in the Paris Agreement ...
News Digest Item | 06 Aug 2018
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Trees in German cities are stressed by an unusual drought that affects their ability to absorb CO 2 and convert it into oxygen, biologist Michael Blaschke says in an article written by Peter Clement in the Rheinische Post. Many trees in inner cities shed ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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Federal employment minister Hubertus Heil has put forward a six-point plan to soften the effect of a coal phase-out in the three lignite (brown coal) mining districts in Germany. There should be a special plan for road, rail, and digital infrastructure ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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A state-managed fund for dealing with the financial legacy of lignite mining in Germany is the wrong way to ensure that the extraction’s long-term effects are dealt with properly, Antje Höning writes in a commentary for the General Anzeiger Bonn. Contrary ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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While Germany’s coal exit commission has already started its work, the commission tasked with finding a concept for the future of mobility in the country still lies in a “summer slumber,” Kerstin Schwenn writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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Political restrictions on wind power expansion rather than cost pressure in the sector are responsible for the current troubles of many wind power companies in Germany, Hermann Albers, head of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), says in a press ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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The German government has used a “cunning trick” by making the state-owned business development bank KfW acquire a stake in grid operator 50Hertz that had been eyed by Chinese power company SGCC, Andreas Mihm writes in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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The exceptionally sunny weather in Germany has brought solar plant owners an unusually high yield of power from the sun, energy company E.ON says in a press release. Between May and July, the German Meteorological Service (DWD) registered 817 hours of ...
News Digest Item | 03 Aug 2018
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Friday, 3 August, 2018- 08:44 Conventional power stations, like hard coal, gas-fired or nuclear plants, are forced to curb generation because of the heat wave hitting Germany. While the stability of the power system as such is not in peril and most ...
News | 03 Aug 2018
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3 Aug 2018- 1:45pm Trucks and other freight vehicles are the backbone of Germany’s export-driven economy. But the rapid growth in traffic volumes increases the pressure of reaching emissions reductions in the transport sector, which already lags behind on ...
Factsheet | 03 Aug 2018
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Cities play a vital role in the implementation of the Paris climate accord, Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, writes in an opinion piece in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. By ...
News Digest Item | 02 Aug 2018
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Because orders from the German market are subsiding, wind turbine manufacturer Enercon, located in the German state of Lower Saxony, will focus more on international customers, Jens Heitmann writes in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. This will cost ...
News Digest Item | 02 Aug 2018
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Wednesday, 1 August, 2018- 17:31 With a national “diesel summit” in early August 2017, the German government tried to curb the fallout of the country’s emissions fraud scandal and avoid being sued by the European Commission over excessive air pollution. ...
News | 01 Aug 2018
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The federal government has today paved the way for implementing changes to the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). The modifications will take effect in 2021. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet has decided on a draft law – which will have to be ...
News Digest Item | 01 Aug 2018
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Tuesday, 31 July, 2018- 14:06 Germany’s energy consumption fell by one percent in the first half of 2018 as warm weather in the spring reduced the need for heating. A rise in renewable energy generation that pushed out coal in the power sector also helped ...
News | 31 Jul 2018
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German utility E.ON has successfully completed the voluntary public takeover offer to innogy minority shareholders, E.ON has announced in a press release. Including RWE’s 76.8 percent stake in innogy, E.ON will hold 86.2 percent of the company’s shares ...
News Digest Item | 31 Jul 2018
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Energy consumption in Germany decreased by one percent in the first half of 2018, compared to the same period in the previous year, the energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen said on Tuesday. After the first three months, there had been a five ...
News Digest Item | 31 Jul 2018
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The German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has decided to reduce the support rate for new solar power installations as capacity expansion in the sector exceeds the level determined by the government, the agency says in a press release. The support rate ...
News Digest Item | 31 Jul 2018
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7 Aug 2018- 10:09pm The beginning of the end of coal-fired power generation is imminent in Germany – a so-called 'coal exit commission' (or ' coal commission ' for short) of government officials and lobbyists is to decide an end-date ...
Factsheet | 07 Aug 2018
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After the German federal government decided on 27 July to buy a 20 percent stake in north-east German transmission grid operator 50Hertz in order to protect this critical infrastructure from being partially owned by Chinese grid operator SGCC, the head of ...
News Digest Item | 30 Jul 2018
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27 Jul 2018- 3:05pm Aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Direct emissions from airplanes and other aircrafts account for more than two percent of global emissions, roughly equivalent to the total greenhoue ...
Factsheet | 27 Jul 2018
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The German government will acquire a temporary 20 percent stake in power transmission grid operator (TSO) 50Hertz from Belgian Elia “on national security grounds”, the economy ministry (BMWi) said in a press release. The ministry said the decision was ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jul 2018
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German foreign minister Heiko Maas and his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono said they would aim to carry out the Paris Climate Agreement, from which the United States withdrew last year, promote free trade, and seek to address issues through multilateral ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jul 2018
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Several German power plants have reduced production as the ongoing heat wave limits the amount of cooling water, writes Daniel Wetzel in an article in Die Welt. With air temperatures of more than 30 degrees across Germany, water in cooling towers becomes ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jul 2018
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Thursday, 26 July, 2018- 16:22 Following last year’s strong growth, wind energy expansion in the first half of 2018 dropped substantially. Wind power groups are calling on the government to launch the special auctions for renewable energies that it agreed ...
News | 26 Jul 2018
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Three years after the uncovery the diesel scandal, transport minister Andreas Scheuer is pushing carmakers to more rapidly advance the transition to electric mobility, according to a dpa article carried by Berliner Morgenpost. At the “ diesel summit ” ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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Fast decisions on climate targets, renewable growth and fossil fuel phase-out are required to plan the future German grid system, a study by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut) within a project funded by the Ministry for Education and ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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German energy company EnBW increased its operating result (adjusted EBITDA) by 6.4 percent to 1.14 billion euros in the first half of 2018, compared to the same period last year, the company said in a press release. Net profit attributable to the ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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While the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) was well-suited to supply necessary financing to kick start the expansion of renewables, it should now be replaced by a functioning European emissions trade in all sectors, Reinhold von Eben-Worlée, president of the ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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Several associations and NGOs have called on economy minister Peter Altmaier and interior and building minister Horst Seehofer not to soften existing energy efficiency standards with the planned Building Energy Law (GEG). In a joint letter, Environmental ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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After a record 2017, Germany saw an “expected” decrease in onshore wind power expansion in the first half of 2018, said German Wind Energy Association (BWE) and industry association VDMA Power Systems at a press conference in Berlin. The “market slump” ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jul 2018
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26 Jul 2018- 9:28am Germany's maritime freight industry is big business that boasts globally ranked shipping companies, state-of-the-art ports, and reliable logistics. The country's merchant fleet mainly runs on CO₂-intensive heavy oil, as do ...
Factsheet | 26 Jul 2018
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It could be cheaper to connect future German North Sea wind parks to the Dutch power grid rather than running the cables to, and through, Germany, Dutch-German transmission grid operator TenneT suggests in its half-year report published on Wednesday. ...
News Digest Item | 25 Jul 2018
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How Germany is greening its growing freight sector to meet climate targets 6 Aug 2018- 11:00am The Dieselgate scandal has put passenger car emissions in the public spotlight in Germany, but an even bigger road polluter – freight transport – remains a ...
Dossier | 06 Aug 2018
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The German federal government’s uncertainty about how to achieve a 65 percent share of renewable energy by 2030 “speaks for itself,” said Sandra Weeser, head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) faction on the federal parliament’s (Budestag) Committee on ...
News Digest Item | 24 Jul 2018
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Our visiting cartoonist Mwelwa Musonko (@MwelxTax) marvels over Germans' diligence when it comes to saving energy- including at the office. Find all of Mwelwa Musonko's cartoons on the Energiewende in the article Elephants and aliens- a ...
News Digest Item | 23 Jul 2018
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The German federal government must implement the promised additional tenders for offshore wind energy without delay and must also rapidly increase the expansion paths for all renewable energy sources, the Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) ...
News Digest Item | 20 Jul 2018
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German business association CDU Economic Council, associated with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called on Germany and the EU to work towards a global regime to reduce CO₂ emissions “like the ETS” (European Union Emissions Trading ...
News Digest Item | 19 Jul 2018
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Of all meat and dairy corporations, German companies Deutsches Milchkontor and Tönnies Lebensmittel are among the top 25 contributors to climate change, according to a new report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the non ...
News Digest Item | 19 Jul 2018
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An asset swap deal between German utilities E.ON and RWE took a step forward after energy corporation innogy reached agreements with the two companies "for a fair integration process," Reuters reports. innogy will no longer be an independently ...
News Digest Item | 19 Jul 2018
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Buyers of Tesla Model S must pay back government support they received to purchase the car, the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) has announced in a press release. BAFA estimates that its action applies to approximately 800 people. ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jul 2018
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Friday, 27 July, 2018- 13:55 Germany's coal mines seen from space, the talk on electric cars and Chinese-German battery production cooperation- CLEW's visiting cartoonist Mwelwa Musonko presents his view of the Energiewende and its many big and ...
News | 27 Jul 2018
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The daily routines of electric vehicle owners are made more complicated and expensive by high charging rates and few charging station, according to a press release from LichtBlick. The green energy provider writes that, in some cases, seven of the 11 ...
News Digest Item | 17 Jul 2018
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Our visiting cartoonist Mwelwa Musonko (@MwelxTax) on the all-consuming focus on immigration in Germany and Europe, while barely anyone talks about threats from climate change. ...
News Digest Item | 17 Jul 2018
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The average CO 2 emissions of new cars sold in the EU rose slightly in 2017, according to a briefing paper from the International Council on Clean Transportation. German automakers BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler are among the most emissive vehicles sold in ...
News Digest Item | 13 Jul 2018
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After a first procedural session in June, Germany’s coal exit commission meets today to “lay the groundwork for joint understanding of the 24 experts and four heads”, writes Andreas Mihm in an article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The commission – ...
News Digest Item | 13 Jul 2018
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The lignite reserves already permitted for mining in Germany are enough to almost completely exhaust the remaining CO 2-budget of the country’s energy sector, environmental organisation WWF Germany says in a short report for the German coal exit ...
News Digest Item | 12 Jul 2018
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Germany should optimise the use of existing grid connections in the North Sea to connect as much offshore wind power capacity to the grid as possible, operator Tennet says in a press release. “We can see a clear potential to optimise the use of existing ...
News Digest Item | 12 Jul 2018
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It is true that Russia is Germany’s biggest energy supplier but German consumers are not “captives”, writes Andreas Mihm in an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “To the dismay of climate politicians, an abundancy of oil, gas and coal is ...
News Digest Item | 12 Jul 2018
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The state government of Baden-Württemberg is to introduce driving bans for the most polluting diesel vehicles in the state capital Stuttgart from 1 January 2019. Baden-Württemberg is the home state of German carmakers Daimler and Porsche. Diesel vehicles ...
News Digest Item | 12 Jul 2018
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In an opinion piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andreas Mihm argues that the government is responsible for Germany’s high power prices, as it does not use the state budget to finance desired support like that for renewables, but passes the costs on ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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Coal mining companies’ financial guarantees to remediate long-term damage from extracting the fossil fuel must be better secured, Green Party head Annalena Baerbock told news agency dpa. “Until now, the level of provisions has been based on calculations ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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In 2020, stricter environmental regulations concerning pollution from seagoing vessels will come into force, putting added pressure on the German shipbuilding industry to innovate, according to an article in tageszeitung (taz). The industry is currently ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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Contracts for difference (CFD) for renewable energy funding are the best available method to pass on cost reductions in different renewable technologies to the average power customer, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) says in its weekly ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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US President Donald Trump has lambasted the German reliance on Russian energy resources, saying the country is “totally controlled by” and “captive of” the fossil fuel exporting giant, according to international media reports. “Germany is totally ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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Private households in Germany paid more than 10 billion euros in taxes and levies on power consumption to the state in 2017, the German Taxpayer Institute (DSi) of the German Taxpayers Federation (BdSt) says in an analysis seen by the Clean Energy Wire. ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jul 2018
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Tuesday, 10 July, 2018- 15:01 Wind and solar power, together with other renewable sources, have overtaken coal as Germany’s most important power source, figures released by the industry group BDEW show. But this milestone in the history of the country’s ...
News | 10 Jul 2018
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The “big four” utilities in Germany- RWE, E.ON, Vattenfall Germany, and EnBW- have all disappeared from a list of the country’s 100 largest companies compiled by the German Monopolies Commission, the competition watchdog says in its annual report. The ...
News Digest Item | 10 Jul 2018
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Old wind turbines in Germany must be refurbished and modernised to ensure that the country meets its 2030 goal of increasing the share of renewables to 65 percent of power consumption, the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) says in a press release. The ...
News Digest Item | 10 Jul 2018
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The southern German federal state Hesse has become the third in the country to make its so-called “disadvantaged areas” available for solar fields, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) has announced in a press release. Following in the footsteps of ...
News Digest Item | 10 Jul 2018
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The governments of China and Germany have vowed to intensify their joint efforts in global climate diplomacy and in upholding free trade, as well as in the development and rollout of energy transition technologies, the German government says in a press ...
News Digest Item | 10 Jul 2018
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For the first time ever, renewable energy sources in Germany have generated more power in the first half of 2018 than all coal plants taken together, making wind, solar, and other green energy sources the largest power source in the country, preliminary ...
News Digest Item | 10 Jul 2018
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Tuesday, 10 July, 2018- 11:52 Chinese battery maker CATL plans to build a large factory in the eastern German state of Thuringia to supply manufacturers in the birth country of the automobile with battery cells to facilitate the transition to low-emission ...
News | 10 Jul 2018
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A majority of 61 percent of the German population think the transition to an energy system dominated by renewables is the right way to go, 30 percent are undecided and 7 percent are opposed to the idea, the 2017 edition of the bi-annual survey on “nature ...
News Digest Item | 09 Jul 2018
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A survey of more than 7,500 German households in summer 2017 found that 84 percent approved of support for renewable energy and two thirds supported a coal exit, researchers from Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI Essen) write. ...
News Digest Item | 09 Jul 2018
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Transmission grid operator TenneT and the European Commission are proposing 1,300 megawatts of power trading capacity between Germany and Denmark, but consumer groups warn this will increase electricity costs for German households, Jacob Schlandt writes ...
News Digest Item | 09 Jul 2018
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The federal council of state governments (Bundesrat) has urged the government to include the financial aspects of a coal exit in the so-called coal commission talks. The house voted by a small minority to include a separate cost analysis and concept on ...
News Digest Item | 09 Jul 2018
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Bavaria is the only German state that made use of a law to set its own minimum distance for wind turbines from residential buildings, the German government has said in an answer to a parliamentary inquiry by the Free Democrats (FDP). The government says ...
News Digest Item | 09 Jul 2018
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In his final speech in the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament in Kiel on Thursday, Robert Habeck, former state environment minister and current Green Party co-chair, praised the positive economic impact of Germany’s energy transition. “It is a ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jul 2018
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Germany can reach its target of increasing the share of renewable energy to 65 percent of power consumption by 2030 from the current 36 percent at moderate costs, according to energy think tank Agora Energiewende*. Agora proposes a series of measures to ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jul 2018
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The planned construction of a second Baltic Sea natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, known as Nord Stream 2, is not necessary to secure natural gas supplies for Germany and Europe, according to a study by the German Institute for Economic Research ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jul 2018
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Low river levels have forced barge operators to reduce the volume of coal loaded onto vessels earmarked for Germany, potentially limiting seaborne import demand, Laurence Walker writes in Montel. Barges are currently loading at around 60 percent of ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jul 2018
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The European Energy Exchange in Leipzig on Friday auctioned a total of 4.36 million emission allowances for the German government that brought in 64.7 million euros, Michael Bauchmüller writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The success of the auction marks a new ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jul 2018
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Volkswagen plans to launch all-electric car sharing services. The carmaker said the platform dubbed “WE” will start rolling out various on-demand services in Germany in 2019. “These services are to be extended to major cities in Europe, North America and ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jul 2018
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The state government of Saxony in eastern Germany, where parts of the Lusatian lignite mining district are located, has published a master plan for future energy research, including the areas of nuclear security, battery production, and photovoltaics, ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jul 2018
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A premature phase-out of the lignite industry doesn’t make “climate policy sense,” it is “humbug,” writes Germany’s former economy and employment minister Wolfgang Clement in an opinion piece in the Handelsblatt. He argues that the legal end date for ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jul 2018
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We are welcoming Mwelwa Musonko (@MwelxTax) as our visiting cartoonist at CLEW. Mwelwa is a Zambian comic book artist and founder of Foresight Comics who is in Germany for the summer after winning the Horst-Köhler-Journalism-Grant of the International ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jul 2018
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The German car industry will likely book record sales in 2018, but a whole range of challenges makes prospects for future business uncertain, the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) says in a press release. Tougher car emissions standards in the ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jul 2018
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The influential Federation of German Industries (BDI) has called on the government to come up with a strategy to secure the supply of scarce raw materials for “future technologies” needed for e-mobility, digitalisation, and the energy transition. “The ...
News Digest Item | 03 Jul 2018
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Demand for cobalt is set to increase substantially over the next years, and fear of insufficient supply for a large-scale roll-out of electric cars has led the mineral’s price to skyrocket from 23,000 dollars per tonne to 90,000 dollars over the past two ...
News Digest Item | 03 Jul 2018
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German energy company innogy has purchased California-based BTCPower. The acquisition will increase the company’s product portfolio in the North American market, and will strengthen its engagement in the United States, according to innogy. Read the press ...
News Digest Item | 03 Jul 2018
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Germany’s energy industry can reach its greenhouse gas reduction obligations for 2030 and 2050 purely by letting the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) do its work, Michael Vassiliadis, head of the mining and chemicals industry union IG BCE, said ...
News Digest Item | 03 Jul 2018
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Germany has granted about 100,000 million euros in subsidies to e-car buyers over the past two years, merely one sixth of the total sum authorities have earmarked for helping e-mobility get off the ground in the country, the Federal Office for Economic ...
News Digest Item | 03 Jul 2018
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Monday, 2 July, 2018- 16:12 “ A Reporter’s Guide to the Energiewende ” offers journalists covering energy and climate policy an overview of key stories, experts/decision-makers and facts on Germany’s landmark effort to mitigate climate change. Click on ...
News | 02 Jul 2018
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Monday, 2 July, 2018- 15:13 The production of renewable energy in Germany dashes to a new record output, providing more than 40 percent of the country's power supply in the first half of 2018. Yet, the good news for proponents of Germany's ...
News | 02 Jul 2018
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The “chaotic” internal strife in the German government's conservative camp over immigration means that no progress of any kind can be expected in the country's energy and climate policymaking for some time, writes Tagesspiegel Background in an ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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By the end of 2017, renewables expansion in Germany exceeded targets by a considerable margin, but the country still lags behind on several other energy transition indicators, writes Hubertus Bardt for the industry-sponsored research institute IW Köln in ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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Disagreement between German environment minister Svenja Schulze and economy minister Peter Altmaier over important measures like a carbon tax or the expansion of the electricity grid is burdening the economy, write Klaus Stratmann and Silke Kersting in ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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Germany’s years-long investment in, and deployment of, renewable sources of energy have brought down the cost of solar and wind power around the world, Aaron Larson writes in POWER. Other countries seeking to similarly transition to a carbon-free energy ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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The net output of renewable energy sources in Germany’s power mix has reached a new record share in the first half of 2018, the website Energy Charts run by research institute Fraunhofer ISE says. With a net generation of 113 terawatt hours (TWh) between ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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Lignite is still of economic significance in Germany’s brown coal regions, and the coal phase-out must be actively managed especially in the economically weak eastern German region of Lusatia, writes the Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic ...
News Digest Item | 02 Jul 2018
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The demand for raw materials needed for the production of renewable energy sources, e-cars and other energy transition technologies could exceed supply by 2035, the German government says in its reply to a parliamentary inquiry filed by the Free Democrats ...
News Digest Item | 29 Jun 2018
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A poll commissioned by the German oil and gas producer Wintershall and carried out by pollster Forsa reveals that 54 percent of German respondents believe that natural gas is the best supplement to renewables, compared to 22 percent for timber, 20 percent ...
News Digest Item | 29 Jun 2018
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German car company BMW has placed an order worth over one billion euros with Chinese battery producer CATL, BMW CEO Harald Krüger told Handelsblatt in an interview. “CATL will open a factory in Europe,” Krüger added. In a separate press release, BMW said ...
News Digest Item | 29 Jun 2018
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The drop in costs for renewable energy production will transform the global energy landscape and also alter the geopolitical clout of different countries, with Germany, the US, and China standing to benefit most from a worldwide transition from fossil ...
News Digest Item | 29 Jun 2018
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Thursday, 28 June, 2018- 16:17 The German government’s Energiewende advisors say the country must put much greater emphasis on the project’s European dimension to achieve the shift to renewables and the necessary emissions reduction during the next decade ...
News | 28 Jun 2018
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A whole range of different policies is needed to bring down the emissions arising from basic commodity production in Germany, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) says in its weekly report. The production and use of basic commodities like ...
News Digest Item | 28 Jun 2018
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The star of Germany as a climate action leader has been descending for several years, not least due to its rigid stance on phasing out nuclear power and filling the energy generation gap with carbon-intensive coal power, Michael Shellenberger writes for ...
News Digest Item | 28 Jun 2018
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Car and transport experts have discussed the European Commission’s proposal to tighten vehicle emission rules in the EU in a committee in the German parliament, giving very different assessments of the approach that is aimed reducing the CO 2 output of ...
News Digest Item | 28 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 27 June, 2018- 16:59 Germany will likely fail on many of its self-imposed energy transition targets, says the government-appointed expert commission tasked with monitoring the progress of the German Energiewende in its opinion on the federal ...
News | 27 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 27 June, 2018- 17:29 As the energy transition touches more and more aspects of everday life, public acceptance will become a key question for the project's future, economist Andreas Löschel says. In the CLEW interview, the academic who ...
News | 27 Jun 2018
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In an international ranking compiled by the US non-profit organisation ACEEE, Germany and Italy came first for being the most energy efficient countries among the world’s 25 largest energy consumers. While “no country came close to a perfect score” of 100 ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jun 2018
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The parliamentary group of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party has welcomed the first session of the commission tasked with planning the country’s coal exit, but stressed that “thoroughness must come before speed” in the group’s ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jun 2018
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The German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) says the country’s coal exit plan should be accompanied by a plan to achieve 100 percent renewable energy supply. “Only planning security for industry can lay the foundations for investments” and prevent ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jun 2018
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Solving a complex social problem like the phasing-out of coal- Germany’s traditional and still most important energy source - is a “core task” of policymakers, and to outsource this task to an external commission amounts to “ cowardice and refusal to ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jun 2018
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The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is likely to have already met its 2020 emissions reduction target of 25 percent compared to 1990 levels, the state’s environment agency (LANUV) says in a press release. Almost one third of Germany’s ...
News Digest Item | 27 Jun 2018
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Tuesday, 26 June, 2018- 17:32 Germany has provided inspiring visionary leadership on energy and climate change for many years, but is now at risk of being left behind, former US Vice President Al Gore said on the first working day of the country’s coal ...
News | 26 Jun 2018
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The phase-out of coal-fired power production in Germany must become a model case for other countries that want to reconcile economic prosperity with an effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) has ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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The economy ministers of the German coal states Brandenburg, Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have warned the country’s coal exit commission against coming up with “hasty” scenarios for phasing out fossil power sources. In a press release issued ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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The 2030 emissions reduction target defines the duty and objectives of the commission tasked with planning Germany’s coal exit, climate economist Barbara Praetorius said in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel. “The 2030 climate targets are set, they ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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The premiers of the German coal mining states of Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have said they still plan coal mining activities to continue well into the 2040s. In a guest article published in the Handelsblatt on the day of the first meeting of ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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Solar PV expansion in Germany could reach the government’s goal of 2.5 gigawatts annually for the first time this year, Carsten Körnig, managing director of the German Solar Association (BSW), was quoted as saying in an article written by Thomas Magenheim ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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Germany has provided inspiring and visionary leadership on energy and climate for many years, but is now at risk of being left behind, according to former US Vice President Al Gore. While stakeholders met for the first session of Germany’s coal exit ...
News Digest Item | 26 Jun 2018
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Thursday, 5 July, 2018- 13:29 The climate advantage of natural gas can contribute to immediate CO₂ reduction by replacing coal and oil in the power sector and in heating, says Jürgen Fuhlrott, Head of Business Development at Germany’s biggest gas ...
News | 05 Jul 2018
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Monday, 9 July, 2018- 15:15 Natural gas is needed to complement renewable energies today and will increasingly be replaced by ‘green gases’, enabling the continued use of existing infrastructure, says Timm Kehler, head of the gas industry initiative ...
News | 09 Jul 2018
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As the European Union sets itself more ambitious energy efficiency goals for 2030, Germany will miss its 2020 targets, writes Steven Hanke in Welt am Sonntag. “We will not reach the efficiency targets we have set ourselves for 2020 in this way,” said ...
News Digest Item | 25 Jun 2018
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The Greens parliamentary group wants to re-introduce the nuclear fuel tax and use it to pay the compensation to nuclear power plant operators for losses after the government pulled forward its nuclear power exit in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear ...
News Digest Item | 25 Jun 2018
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Friday, 12 October, 2018- 17:00 In a bid to improve Germany's poor emission reduction record and to identify economic perspectives for people employed in the waning coal industry, the government has set up a commission tasked with managing the ...
News | 12 Oct 2018
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Essen-based Open Grid Europe (OGE) is the largest of 16 gas transmission grid operators in Germany by length of the network. It manages 12,000 kilometres of pipelines all over Germany, equal to the length of the country’s infamous Autobahn system. Core ...
Expert
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Two-thirds of Germany’s solar heat installations could have a higher output if their use was optimised, the energy customer consultancy co2online says in a press release. Solar heat users miss out on 1.4 billion kilowatt hours per year, roughly equivalent ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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US company General Electric (GE) will ramp up its investment in wind power in Germany in a bid to revive its ailing business, Axel Höpner and Kathrin Witsch write in the Handelsblatt. The veteran US manufacturer, which has recently got booted from the Dow ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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The inspiration for the new world of private mobility based on electric cars today comes from the US and China, as Germany, the current carmaker champion, is busy “fighting a messy rearguard action to save the combustion engine,” Tobias Engelmeier writes ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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Germany’s largest carmaker VW has announced that it will invest 100 million US dollars in a US company that specialises in the production of “ super batteries,” Hanna Decker writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The company named QuantumScape ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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Environmental Action Germany (DUH) is pushing for driving bans in polluted cities of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state, for all diesel cars that do not meet the Euro 6 emissions standard, the environmental NGO says in a press ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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The German government currently administers past achievements and fails to set new impulses in economic and energy policy to ensure that the current economic upswing can be sustained, Rainer Dulger, head of the heavy industry employers’ association ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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Over the coming decade, Germany might have to pay billions of euros from its state budget to buy emissions rights from other countries if it does not manage to significantly lower its own greenhouse gas emissions in the transport, buildings, and ...
News Digest Item | 22 Jun 2018
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Industry bets on gas as last trump card in Energiewende 25 Jun 2018- 3:05pm Does the energy transition seal the fate of natural gas in Germany? Europe's biggest economy will have to virtually phase out all fossil fuels to fully decarbonise by 2050. ...
Dossier | 25 Jun 2018
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Thursday, 21 June, 2018- 16:13 An internal brawl in the German government's conservative camp over immigration has a paralysing effect on the country's energy and climate policymaking. After 100 days in office, the government coalition ...
News | 21 Jun 2018
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Power transmission grid operator Amprion and gas transmission grid operator Open Grid Europe (OGE) want to test power-to-gas (PtG) technologies on an industrial scale in Germany to better integrate electricity with the other sectors, the companies ...
News Digest Item | 21 Jun 2018
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The joint power-to-gas (PtG) project by power and gas transmission grid operators Amprion and Open Grid Europe (OGE) should not come as a surprise, as especially the gas industry worries about its future in a decarbonised Germany, writes Andreas Mihm in ...
News Digest Item | 21 Jun 2018
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South Korean carmaker Hyundai has agreed a deal with Volkswagen Group’s Audi to collaborate on hydrogen car technology, hoping to boost an energy segment that has lagged behind battery electric vehicles, news agency Reuters reports. “The fuel cell is the ...
News Digest Item | 20 Jun 2018
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The term “just transition” was used at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue to mean limiting the economic consequences of decarbonisation in regions of industrial countries – a reasonable demand, Bernhard Pötter writes in an opinion piece for tageszeitung (taz ...
News Digest Item | 20 Jun 2018
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Tuesday, 19 June, 2018- 18:10 In her speech at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for more ambitious global climate action and multilateral cooperation. At international level, it will be important to develop a ...
News | 19 Jun 2018
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Tuesday, 3 July, 2018- 15:30 Cars fuelled by compressed natural gas (CNG) could reach a share of up to ten percent of the total fleet in Germany and Europe, says Stephen Neumann, Volkswagen Group Officer for Natural Gas Mobility in an interview with the ...
News | 03 Jul 2018
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20 Jun 2018- 9:35am Using renewable electricity to produce hydrogen and CO₂-neutral methane could solve some of the Energiewende’s toughest challenges. Making gas with wind and solar power could provide carbon-neutral fuel for heating and transport, and ...
Factsheet | 20 Jun 2018
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Monday, 18 June, 2018- 14:58 Social justice should be a guiding principle of modern climate policy, German environment minister Svenja Schulze said at the opening of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. Samantha Smith of the International Trade ...
News | 18 Jun 2018
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Due to the sluggish advance of its energy transition in the heating and transport sectors, Germany is set to miss the EU target of covering 18-percent of final energy consumption with renewables by 2020, lobby group the Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jun 2018
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German environment minister Svenja Schulze has called on the country’s energy-intensive industries to present plans to reduce their carbon emissions, Handelsblatt reports. At a meeting in early July, the Social Democrat (SPD) will meet representatives of ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jun 2018
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The German Free Democratic Party (FDP) has proposed doing away with EU emissions limits for passenger cars and freight vehicles and instead including the transport sector in the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), the German parliament says in a ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jun 2018
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The costs for power grid stabilising measures rose to a record 1.4 billion euros in 2017 (880 million euros in 2016), says the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) in its report on grid and system security measures. This was due to lagging grid expansion, a ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jun 2018
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A socially just transition of all economic sectors should be the guiding principal for modern climate policy, German environment minister Svenja Schulze told more than 30 ministers at the opening of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. According to ...
News Digest Item | 18 Jun 2018
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The far-right party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) may be largely focusing on immigration and not playing a direct role in German federal policy, but its influence can be seen even in energy and climate policy, writes ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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The self-inflicted emissions scandal alone is a huge challenge for Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche, write Nikolaus Doll and Philipp Vetter for Die Welt. But the carmakers are also struggling with the shift to electric mobility, the conflict over US ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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Munich-based start-up Sono Motors has crossed the threshold of 5,000 reservations for a small electric car that generates power with solar cells spread all over the vehicle. Sono presented the car, named Sion, less than a year ago and plans to start ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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The European Union agreeing on a more ambitious renewables target than the German government had pushed for shows that the Energiewende country is increasingly struggling when it comes to climate protection, writes Thorsten Knuf in an opinion piece in ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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Convening in Argentina, ministers from the G20 – a group of both developing and developed countries, including Germany – are discussing fossil fuel extraction, the digitalisation of energy markets, and the transparent handling of data, according to dpa in ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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The German wind power industry generated turnover of 17.7 billion euros in 2016, making it “the most important pillar in the green economy”, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) says in a press release. Manufacturing, installation and ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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A resident from the German coal mining state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) demands 80 billion euros for a piece of land that energy company RWE needs for lignite mining, arguing that the sum equals the revenues the company intends to make with the local ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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A fight over immigration policy between Germany’s two conservative sister parties paralyses the work of conservative ministers in charge of energy transition policies, Nikolaus Doll, Michael Fabricius and Daniel Wetzel write in Die Welt. Energy and ...
News Digest Item | 15 Jun 2018
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The German environment ministry (BMU) has launched an app that is meant to contribute to the climate friendly behaviour of football fans watching the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia on public screens, the ministry has said in a press release. The app shows ...
News Digest Item | 14 Jun 2018
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Talks on renewable energy policy in Europe have achieved an unexpected breakthrough, as negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU member states were able to reach a compromise, report Dave Keating and Frédéric Simon for EURACTIV. The deal ...
News Digest Item | 14 Jun 2018
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Germany’s new commission to define a path and an end-date for an exit from coal-fired power generation should also help close the gap in emission reductions to reach the country’s 2020 climate goal, environment minister Svenja Schulze told the utility ...
News Digest Item | 14 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 13 June, 2018 Increasing the EU's renewable energy target without a clear idea on how to achieve it would undermine political credibility, according to German energy minister Peter Altmaier. More ambitious goals for the deployment of ...
News | 13 Jun 2018
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The German government’s ‘ Climate Protection Report ’ is a “testimony of failure,” writes Michael Bauchmüller in a commentary for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The truth is that this government no longer dares to pursue a serious climate policy. […] It ...
News Digest Item | 13 Jun 2018
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The planners of future grid extensions in Germany must pay more attention to new technologies, according to grid operator Tennet. The company’s CEO, Lex Hartmann, said that the increasing digitalisation of power grids could replace the construction of ...
News Digest Item | 13 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 13 June, 2018 (All day) Germany’s policymakers have not kept pace with the energy industry’s rapid transformation caused by the Energiewende, and must catch up urgently, according to the utility association BDEW. The utilities also say that ...
News | 13 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 13 June, 2018 (All day) The German government has conceded that the country is on course to widely miss its 2020 climate target. The economic boom, the pressure of immigration, and high emissions in transport mean that the energy transition ...
News | 13 Jun 2018
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Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his support for the joint communiqué at the G7 summit in Canada is “sobering and a bit depressing”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Anne Will in a television interview for German public broadcaster ARD. Merkel said ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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Matthias Miersch, deputy leader of the Social Democratic (SPD) group in the German parliament, reiterated his party’s call for additional renewables auctions – as foreseen in the coalition treaty – in an upcoming reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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Household power prices in Germany were the EU's highest in the second half of 2017, according to eurostat. Germans paid an average of 30.5 cents per kilowatt hour, followed by Denmark with 30.1 cents per kilowatt hour. The prices reflected that the ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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German utility EnBW is expanding into the North American market for offshore wind, forming a joint venture with Trident Winds to develop a project off the coast of Central California, the German company said on Monday. EnBW North America and Seattle-based ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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Germany is in fourth place in the European Union energy efficiency ranking ODYSSEE-MURE, behind the UK, Ireland and Spain. The ranking scores EU countries on different energy efficiency criteria, such as energy efficiency level, energy efficiency progress ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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The government’s Climate Protection Report 2017 will confirm that Germany is set to miss its 2020 national climate target by a wide margin. A draft, seen by the Clean Energy Wire, says that the country will only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 32 ...
News Digest Item | 11 Jun 2018
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The share of renewable fuels in Germany’s heating system took over that of hard coal in 2016, an answer by the government to a parliamentary inquiry by the Green Party published by the German Federal Parliament shows. Their share has more than doubled ...
News Digest Item | 08 Jun 2018
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German power customers are at risk of paying more if nuclear plants in regions with a high share of renewable energy sources are allowed to produce more energy, the council of federal state governments in Germany (Bundesrat) has warned. Nuclear plant ...
News Digest Item | 08 Jun 2018
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Germany’s capital, Berlin, is set to introduce a new mobility law which aims to enhance the status of low-carbon means of transportation, Klaus Kurpjuweit reports in Der Tagesspiegel. The governing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Green Party and Left ...
News Digest Item | 08 Jun 2018
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The Swedish government has given the green light for construction of the controversial natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 that connects Germany with Russia via the Baltic Sea, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Focus Online. While Sweden has ...
News Digest Item | 08 Jun 2018
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In contrast to some recent analyses and arguments brought forward regularly in the energy policy debate, the need for storage is not an obstacle to the progress of the energy transition, according to a study published by the German Institute for Economic ...
News Digest Item | 07 Jun 2018
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The coal commission’s mandate is “nowhere near enough,” according to Green Party co-leader Annalena Baerbock. “The commission now has the difficult task of outgrowing this mandate. Neither the climate, nor the regions’ affected residents can afford a ...
News Digest Item | 07 Jun 2018
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A new regulation for noise emissions of wind turbines in Germany’s northern federal state of Schleswig-Holstein could mean that the turbines located near residential areas would have to be switched off overnight, Markus Billhardt writes in the Lübecker ...
News Digest Item | 07 Jun 2018
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The opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) wants to advocate a national carbon price to advance the energy transition across all sectors, the Energie & Management magazine reports. The ...
News Digest Item | 07 Jun 2018
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According to a new study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), electrifying cars will reduce need for workers in the car industry, including external suppliers to car manufacturers. The researchers looked at three different ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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German buyers can by now choose between 27 purely electric cars, with the government offering a 4,000-euro premium and tax reliefs. Yet most private individuals still don’t opt for e-cars, RP Online reports. Between January and May this year, 1.43 million ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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More than 40 percent of German consumers don’t know how many kilowatt-hours of electricity they consumed or how much they paid for it last year, price comparison website Verivox says in a press release. A third of respondents to a Verivox survey had a ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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Spanish-german Wind turbine producer Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has officially opened a new assembly plant for nacelles, a component for offshore wind turbines, in Cuxhaven, northern Germany. The company says the plant is the country’s “most modern ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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Ahead of the G7 summit in Canada, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated the importance of her government’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, after the US had decided to leave the accord last year. “All the more it’s on us to reach our ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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A last-minute fix to the rules for onshore wind tenders is designed to ensure commercial projects posing as citizens’ initiatives don’t dominate the next rounds of auctions. The government fast-tracked the most pressing change to the system, to be passed ...
News Digest Item | 06 Jun 2018
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Thursday, 7 June, 2018 Germany has launched official talks to phase out coal power in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions that have remained stubbornly high despite the country’s shift to renewable power. The Clean Energy Wire collects reactions from ...
News | 07 Jun 2018
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Wednesday, 6 June, 2018 Germany has launched official talks on phasing out coal in power generation. The aim is to cut greenhouse gas emissions that have remained stubbornly high despite the country’s ongoing shift to renewable power. The government on ...
News | 06 Jun 2018
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Tuesday, 5 June, 2018 Germany's energy minister Peter Altmaier said there won't be any changes to fees on power and heat during his term, refuting the idea of a price for CO2 emissions floated by coalition partner SPD and the environment ...
News | 05 Jun 2018
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The planned commission that will prepare the end of coal-fired power production in Germany does not include enough representatives from eastern Germany, the Left Party was quoted as saying in an article written by the news agency dpa and carried by the ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jun 2018
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Germany is prepared as much as any other country to steer its own and the global community’s development onto a more sustainable path, but it has to increase its ambitions and efforts to tap into this potential, government advisors affiliated with the ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jun 2018
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According to a government official, Germany wants the 8-9 June G7 summit, to be held in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, Canada, to issue a joint communiqué that also covers climate and energy-related issues. In light of the US’ position, agreeing on a ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jun 2018
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Heating systems that use renewable energies were installed in 65 percent of the just under 110,100 new residential buildings completed in Germany in 2017, writes the Federal Statistical Office in a press release. Forty-three percent of new buildings used ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jun 2018
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The list of members of Germany’s coal commission is complete, Spiegel Online reports. Gerda Hasselfeldt, the former parliamentary group leader of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU, will reportedly join the ...
News Digest Item | 05 Jun 2018
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German climate policy announcements are the most ambitious among all of the western industrialised nations in the G7 but the country only comes second to last in the group when it comes to ending support for fossil fuel use, the think tank Overseas ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jun 2018
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The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw his country’s support from the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 had outraged many commentators around the world, but the reality in many nations one year later is that they too do not seem ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jun 2018
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Manipulated diesel cars in Germany will need a mechanical engine retrofitting to ensure the European Union does not sue the country over exceeding emissions levels in transport for several years, environment minister Svenja Schulze says in an interview ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jun 2018
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Solar power plants Germany produced more electricity than ever before in May, which brought 275 hours of sunshine instead of the average 196, the Renewable Energy Industry Initiative (IWR) reports. According to preliminary data by grid operators, solar ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jun 2018
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The German government should quickly narrow down its mid-century greenhouse gas reduction goal because energy policy decisions in the here and now depend on it, said German Energy Agency (dena) head Andreas Kuhlmann. “My recommendation to the government ...
News Digest Item | 04 Jun 2018
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Four German carmakers have each dismantled a Tesla Model 3 after buying them on the grey market, Stefan Hajek reports in the business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. Hajek does not name the carmakers, but hints at Daimler, BMW, Audi, and VW. The engineers ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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The Green state premier of the southern German federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, will try to evade diesel driving bans that could be imposed to improve air quality in Stuttgart, the state’s capital, the newspaper Stuttgarter ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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The German coalition government loves to talk about sustainability, but has shifted all responsibility for the nitty-gritty of climate action onto a commission tasked with managing the country’s coal phaseout, Michael Bauchmüller writes in the Süddeutsche ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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The northern German federal state of Lower Saxony will “probably become the number one energy state” in the country thanks to its large installed and potential capacity of onshore and offshore wind power, the state’s Social Democrat (SPD) minister ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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The small town of Wolfhagen near Frankfurt in central Germany “has taken a big step into the future over the past few years” by becoming one of the country’s first municipalities to cover 100 percent of its power demand from renewable sources, Austin ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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Fishermen in the Netherlands have protested against the rapid growth of offshore wind power capacity in the North Sea, The Guardian reports. “Dutch, German, and British turbines are pushing us out of the southern part of the North Sea. About half a per ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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Due to the end of their 20-year life span of guaranteed support payments, about 20 gigawatt (GW) of wind power capacity in Germany will be retired by 2023 as their operation is no longer profitable, Simone Peter, head of Germany’s Renewable Energy ...
News Digest Item | 01 Jun 2018
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1 Jun 2018 The price tag for Germany’s energy transition is one of the project’s most controversial aspects. Estimates on how much money the country will eventually have to invest in the shift to renewables and the good-bye to nuclear power vary wildly to ...
Factsheet | 01 Jun 2018
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The reform of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) was postponed for the third week in a row on Wednesday. The changes proposed to Germany’s renewables law, which enabled the rapid growth of solar, wind and biogas generated power, are subject to disagreements ...
News Digest Item | 31 May 2018
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The German Postal Service’s e-car manufacturing branch Streetscooter could soon be listed on the stock market, news agency Reuters reports. “It’s theoretically possible. We’re looking at the next two to three years,” the Postal Service’s board member ...
News Digest Item | 31 May 2018
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Drivers of diesel cars have apparently ignored the first diesel driving bans in Germany that took effect on 31 May on two busy roads in the city of Hamburg, website bild.de reports. “Commuter traffic flows as usual”, the article says, adding that police ...
News Digest Item | 31 May 2018
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24/07/2018- 12:20pm Germany has launched a highly anticipated task force on phasing out coal power, the most prominent blemish on the former climate action pioneer country’s emissions reduction record. The coal exit commission is supposed to find economic ...
Factsheet | 24 Jul 2018
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Wednesday, 30 May, 2018 Germany struggles to get its highly anticipated coal exit task force on track. The government on Wednesday postponed at the last minute the official launch of the phase-out commission for the third time. The quarrels over the ...
News | 30 May 2018
