Top-class guests from politics, companies, start-ups and science will discuss in the SZ high-rise how we can – and must – think about business in a sustainable way. All reports on the panel discussions, debates and lectures can be found on this special page.
It’s a tricky situation: on the one hand there is climate change, this enormous task facing humanity. And then, on the other hand, there is Russia’s nonsensical and brutal war against Ukraine. It forces the West to continue betting on what caused the planet to overheat: fossil fuels. For Claudia Kemfert, energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), it is therefore clear: “We are now paying the price for the delayed energy transition,” she says. The consequence of this is logical for them. Kemfert demands that renewable energies urgently need to be expanded much more quickly. That, she says, will make electricity cheaper again for consumers in the medium and long term.
While Kemfert fears new fossil lock-ins, i.e. dependencies on oil, gas and coal, other experts see little chance of escaping the looming dilemma. People should neither have to freeze in winter, nor should industry stand still because of a lack of energy. And the world needs more and more of it. Dieter Vollkommer, who is responsible, among other things, for the global sustainability program at Siemens Energy, predicts that demand for electricity will increase by two to four percent each year. “The electricity sector must be decarbonized first,” demands Vollkommer. In the mid-2030s, laws would come into force in many countries that would oblige energy companies to be climate neutral. Therefore, there is no way around the energy transition.
Only green hydrogen really helps in the fight against climate change
An important part of this transition could be hydrogen. But it only really contributes to decarbonization if it is also green, i.e. if it is produced from the sun with the help of renewable energies. However, the capacities in Germany are far from sufficient for this. “We definitely need imports,” says Florian Bieberbach, head of Munich’s municipal utility, “today we don’t even have 100 percent electricity from renewable sources.” At the moment, Claudia Kemfert finds a convincing image that green hydrogen is something like “the champagne among energy sources: expensive and only for special occasions”. Her advice is that hydrogen should only be used if there is no other alternative, such as electricity.
Tim Meyerjürgens, head of day-to-day business at electricity network operator Tennet, sees things in a similar way. Wherever molecules are used, such as gas in the chemical industry, one should continue to use molecules and transport them there, because that can be done effectively with pipelines. However, the electrolyzers, i.e. the systems in which hydrogen is produced by electrolysis using electricity, should be built where electricity is available in large quantities and cheaply, for example near the offshore wind farms. These systems, says Claudia Kemfert, would also pay off financially if the legal framework for them were changed. At Siemens, they are already working on generating hydrogen directly on the wind turbines at sea.
When it comes to the energy transition, Meyerjürgens sees the glass as half full. “We’ve already achieved a lot,” he says, “but we’re only at the beginning.” However, what keeps coming back to him are the long approval procedures. Florian Bieberbach, the head of the public utility company, can tell you a thing or two about that. He talks about an overhead line in the city that needs to be replaced. Although this already exists, the municipal utilities are now threatened with a multi-year approval process. In general, the lead time for many projects has become “insanely long”, which can also be seen in the second Munich S-Bahn trunk line. The construction itself has become even faster thanks to modern methods than it used to be.
Time consuming double loops
Meyerjürgens from the network operator Tennet does not want the criticism of the lengthy approval process to be understood as whining. And it’s not about undermining democratically guaranteed rights in citizen participation. But in the spatial planning and planning approval procedures, double loops are often turned, and for fear of lawsuits, the approval applications contain a lot of details, which in turn have to be checked at great expense. As a result, the legal situation sometimes changes when the examination of all the many details has finally been completed. Then amendments would have to be made that would delay the whole thing again. That has to go faster.
This is advisable because energy prices are exploding. The experts expect the costs for gas to be three to four times as high, for oil about twice as high, and for electricity the increase will be more moderate, also because the surcharge from the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) will be reduced. “That will buffer the increase somewhat,” says energy expert Kemfert. She urgently calls for the expansion of renewables at high pressure: “The faster we get there, the lower the costs for households will be,” she says. The current crisis is a wake-up call, the mistakes of the past – the dependence on fossil fuels – should not be repeated. But that doesn’t change the fact that Tim Meyerjürgens describes as follows: “The next few years will be challenging.”