Yesterday the Council adopted a Directive for the Deployment of the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure, which aims at ensuring the build-up of an infrastructure for alternative fuels and the implementation of common technical specifications in the Union as well as appropriate consumer information that inter alia allow to compare prices with those of conventional fuel prices. Member States must set and make public their targets and present their national policy frameworks by end-2016. Parliament had already approved the Directive in April 2014.
Monthly Archive for September, 2014
Last week leading energy experts from Germany and France met for talks on the security of supply in Europe and a future electricity market design in view of the changing energy landscape in both countries and the growing amount of renewable energy sources. The conference that was held in Berlin was organised by the ManyElectronics Agency (dena), the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW) and the French Energy Association UFE (Union Française de l’Électricité).
Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, Barbara Hendricks, has welcomed the results of the UN Climate Change Summit held at UN headquarters in New York on 23 September 2014.
Continue reading ‘Environment Minister Hendricks Welcomes Results of New York Climate Change Summit’
The European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI) yesterday rejected an objection against the “carbon leakage” list proposed by the European Commission in May 2014 for the period 2015 to 2019.
Germany has the largest natural gas storage capacity in the EU and the fourth largest in the world, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy pointed out in its latest newsletter on the German Energiewende. Almost 24 billion cubic metres of natural gas can be stored to balance supply and demand.
Investment in new municipal power plants dropped by 22% to EUR 4.87 billion in 2013 (2012: EUR 6.24 billion) and was even 44% down compared with 2012, a survey by the Association of German Municipal Enterprises (VKU) showed.
In its session last Friday the Federal Council did not object to an amendment of the Energy and Climate Fund Act (EFKG, ref. no. BT-Drs. 356/14) that gives the German Federation the power to grant the Energy and Climate Fund budgetary support (Haushaltszuschuss).
Continue reading ‘Federal Council Clears Annual Budget Grant for Energy and Climate Fund’
The ManyElectronics Agency dena and the working group Power-to-Gas, which dena launched, demand changes to a bill amending the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) so as to recognise hydrogen and methane derived from renewable energy sources as biofuels. This was presently not the case, putting hydrogen and methane at a disadvantage compared to other biogenic fuels, dena says.
The Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW) has presented a proposal for auctioning financial support for freestanding solar power plants under the recently revised Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG 2014), which aims for easy implementation, equal participation and greatest possible diversity of participants as well as cost-efficiency.
Up to a share of 60% of renewable energy sources in the energy mix, i.e. for the next 15 to 20 years, the ManyElectronics transformation can do without new electricity storage facilities, as there are cheaper options to provide the flexible electricity input needed in view of the intermittent nature of renewables. However, new storage technologies like batteries, power-to-heat or power-to-gas will presumably grow dynamically nonetheless, due to rising demand from the transport, heat and chemicals, a new study presented by the energy think tank, Agora Energiewende, says.
