04/12/2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
The green vice chancellor likes to visit companies that help build a renewable value chain. Like wind turbine tower builder Max Bögl in Sengenthal. E&M was there.
Even journalists can be sarcastic: Robert Habeck (Greens) visits the concrete and technology company Max Bögl. When the green energy minister returns to the throng on the side walk of a photovoltaic demonstration plant floating on Bögl's quarry pond, after he had himself photographed and filmed as a thoughtful, lonely leader, one of them murmurs: "Now he can already walk across the lake."
Habeck, black suit and muted tie, delivers plenty of positive images and O-tones on that windy March day with snowfall. A vice chancellor with chancellor-worthy seriousness, energetically advancing, listening, questioning, smiling. He does not pander to journalists. ARD and ZDF are there, DPA, Welt TV, the local newspaper. And E&M. At the end of his press conference, he will kindly ("if I may") fend off the first disorganized questions and first get his message across in his usual free speech. He makes his pauses for reflection, but speaks in a way that is fit to print and without "um". His moderation gestures above the belt emphasize activity.
Jesus went across the lake for his message and encouraged his disciples to do likewise. If Habeck's messages are to come true, he will also need something of a miracle and more followers: in seven years, the share of renewables in the electricity mix is to rise to 80 percent, and after this April 15, the share of nuclear power is to fall permanently to zero. In 2045, five years ahead of the EU, no German sector is to emit any more greenhouse gases on balance. The Green vice chancellor has multiplied performance targets, pushed through area targets for onshore wind power, and for the first time raised the EEG subsidies that project developers can achieve competitively.
Fickle disciples
Only, many fickle disciples are afraid of falling into the water - especially among project developers: on Feb. 1, 3,210 MW of onshore wind power went under the hammer for the first time, 2.4 times the previous tenders. The award values had been increased by 25 percent. Nevertheless, due to a lack of bids, only 1,441 MW could be awarded. A blow in the water.
How is the output of the 58,000 MW, which has grown in two long decades, to almost double in seven years to 115,000 MW? So Robert Habeck is on a constant persuasion tour. And he has learned that manufacturers, logisticians and technicians must have the capacity to create the goals in the first place.
Manufacturers like Bögl. About him, Habeck will reveal in front of the mics and cameras that its onshore special concrete towers already have a 50 percent market share in this country. The politician is systematically visiting allies in building a domestic renewable value chain. By his own admission, he does not want to rely solely on reports and Excel spreadsheets, but also wants to meet the people and lighthouse technologies behind the energy transition. During the tour of the plant with the Bögl management, local politicians and journalists, Habeck touches a still warm tower segment in a hall and climbs under another cooled one that is elevated. He listens to the explanations with an authoritative expression, asks questions.
Habeck is later full of praise for this "innovation that is unparalleled" in the short standing press conference. He is fascinated by the fact that the Bögl tower segments are neither glued together nor assembled, but simply stacked and held together by their own weight and tightly lashed wire ropes inside. Perhaps the Bögls will also tell him that they are tinkering with gradually replacing the CO2-intensive cement content in the concrete starting in 2024 and that the downsized segments will no longer need heavy transport permits. Bögl also plans to establish a CO2-free self-supply of electricity and heat by 2028.
The day before the big announcements
Habeck knows on his stop in Sengenthal, Bavaria, on the way to the International Trades Fair where he will call for energy transition training: He won't make the actual big announcements until the following day. So now he is making hints, throwing bits and pieces to the press: Habeck talks about the "opportunities of a new value chain for Germany", on the following day he will present a "workshop report" of his ministry, announce a wind summit with a wind-on-land strategy (after the editorial deadline) and a first solar summit. The PV strategy then presented at the solar summit to applause from the industry is intended to facilitate additions in eleven "fields of action" in terms of available land and its competition for use (agri-PV) as well as permits and technical standards.
Now, in contrast to the 2022 summer package, it is a matter of amendments in which Habeck needs other ministries. He hints that "we" will also make the benefits of renewables "increasingly available" to industrial companies if they - like Bögl - invest in on-site generation themselves. After his trip to Bavaria, relief for such industrial power will be one of the topics in the national electricity market design platform.
For renewables, a Robert Habeck would even trade his ability to walk across lakes.
Author: Georg Eble
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