Kraftwerkstrategie

In order to decarbonise and ensure the security of our electricity supply, we need not only a consistent expansion of renewable energy and the grids but also modern and highly flexible climate-friendly power stations. In order to achieve this goal, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck and Minister of Finance Christian Lindner have agreed on the central elements of a Power Station Strategy and taken decisions on additional projects.

They agreed to drive forward the work on the future electricity market design as quickly as possible, with a focus being placed on developing approaches for a market-based, technology-neutral capacity mechanism, which are to be in place by 2028 at the latest. The Federal Government is to reach a political agreement on this by summer 2024 at the latest. In addition to this, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action will put forward a paper of options as the basis for a political agreement involving the parliamentary groups on the future electricity market design by taking account of the work of the Climate-neutral electricity system platform. The issue of ensuring a secure supply of electricity will be assessed using electricity security analyses, which take into account scenarios factoring in conservative assumptions and crises.

The Power Station Strategy provides a framework for investments in modern, highly flexible and climate-friendly power stations which will be able to use hydrogen in the future. It also makes provisions for ensuring that a sufficient supply of climate-friendly electricity is available also in times of little sun or wind, thus making a key contribution to system stability.
In order to install a ‘no regret’ amount of power stations quickly, the Power Station Strategy incentivises the immediate expansion of power stations. The calls for tenders under the Power Station Strategy will be designed in a way that will allow new power stations to be fully integrated into the future capacity mechanism.

Specifically, the Federal Chancellor, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the Federal Minister of Finance agreed to invite tenders for new hydrogen-ready gas-fired power station capacity of up to 4 times 2.5 GW under the Power Station Strategy in the short term. These gas-fired power stations are to be fully converted to hydrogen between 2035 and 2040, with the specific conversion date to be set in 2032, and are to be set up in locations where they are useful to the system. The funding will be provided by the Climate and Transformation Fund.

In order to promote the development of new technology (such as nuclear fusion) and the testing of power station operation, suitable funding instruments will be used. Power stations using 100% hydrogen with a capacity of up to 500 MW will be financed from funding for energy research. The issue of carbon capture and storage in gas-based electricity generation facilities is being explored under the Carbon Management Strategy.

In addition, it was agreed that obstacles standing in the way of the establishment and operation of electrolysers will be fully removed and all options to accelerate the expansion of electrolysers, particularly those useful to the system, explored. Furthermore, it is to be ensured that there will be no double-charging of levies and fees on the electricity used for storage and electrolysis, thus providing incentives for the production of hydrogen that are both market-based and useful to the system. All existing regulatory obstacles will be removed to allow for the unrestricted use of surplus electricity.

The planning and approval procedures for the power stations covered by the Power Station Strategy are considerably sped up.

The agreement now reached on the Power Station Strategy will be discussed with the European Commission in Brussels, followed by a public consultation. This will allow us to pick up on the constructive talks held with the European Commission last summer.