For months, the coalition has been struggling to come up with a plan for when, where and how new gas power plants should be built in Germany. Now the potential builders are starting to get nervous.
The Industrie-Club in Düsseldorf is a salon with a lot of history, even notorious, after all, Adolf Hitler met with business leaders here in 1932. But on this evening in January, the industry club is about the future – the future of electricity supply. Michael Lewis, the head of the energy company Uniper, is a guest. The company, which was nationalized during the crisis, wants to build climate-friendly gas power plants that can also burn hydrogen, but Lewis has a problem: This is only worthwhile with state funding, and the federal government has not yet been able to agree on the concept. “Without a fixed framework for remuneration, no one in Germany will invest in new gas power plants,” complained the Briton.