Germany has scaled back the amount of gas-fired power capacity it plans to develop to 10 gigawatts, about half the level planned at the start of the year, aiming to strike a balance between decarbonisation and backing up intermittent renewables. <\/p>\n
The decision was reached by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Social Democrat coalition partners late on Thursday, in a compromise between supporters of a swifter energy transition and those who worry that industry will suffer without dependable supplies of cheap energy.<\/p>\n
“The tenders will specify that the new power stations are technically capable of being fired by hydrogen,” Merz added.<\/p>\n
The possibility of later converting the power stations is designed to assuage critics of gas power, who say it locks Germany into producing greenhouse gases rather than tackling climate change.<\/p>\n
Merz said the European Commission had signalled it would accept the new plans, which also include a commitment to build a further two gigawatts of capacity using any technology – potentially including battery storage.<\/p>\n
Subsidies – running into the billions of euros – will be needed since capacity that is only intermittently used is commercially unattractive for energy companies.<\/p>\n
Tenders for eight gigawatts will be issued next year, with the new capacity to come online by 2031.<\/p>\n
The tender will require the new power stations to be carbon-neutral by 2045 – though this could also be achieved by sequestering the carbon dioxide they emit.<\/p>\n
A further two gigawatts of capacity will be tendered for in 2026 and 2027 which, though initially gas-fired, must rapidly be converted to hydrogen fuel. Another technology-neutral tender is planned for 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany has scaled back the amount of gas-fired power capacity it plans to develop to 10 gigawatts, about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-569677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}