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Germany's power system heavily relies on wind energy. Its wind farms generated more power than all of the other state’s wind power in the European Union in 2015. The wind power's share of Germany's total power generation reached 85% on January 1, 2018. According to an energy consultancy firm, Wood Mackenzie, its recent power and renewable energy research showed that Germany's record-setting number of onshore power generation installations in 2017 triggered the development of wind power in Northwestern Europe. This report pointed out that in the future, Germany will still be a leader of onshore wind power in the EU. However, it also suggested that there is still room for improvement for Germany’s renewable energy policies.
According to Wood Mackenzie's Northern and Western Europe Onshore Wind Power Outlook, in 2017, Northwestern Europe’s newly added onshore wind power capacity reached 10 GW. A part of this newly added capacity had come from Germany, which added a record-breaking 5.3 GW of new onshore wind power capacity in just one year. The report showed that North Europe's wind power development will be facilitated by market demand from Sweden, UK and Norway. The demand in the German market will stimulate the onshore wind power development in Austria, Benelux, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
However, according to Scassola, the annual capacity of Germany's onshore wind power won't always grow. There is an installation target for the year 2020, but the awarded bidding projects in 2017 will not be able to get connected to the grid before 2020. (The reasons will be explained in the 3 paragraphs below.) Therefore, in 2018, Germany's wind power generation installations will only rise to 3.3 GW. In 2019, it will even drop to 1 GW. In 2020, it is predicted to rebound steadily. Then in 2021 and 2022, the installation will peak.
In the recent years, renewable energy's performance/cost ratio has continued growing. Thus, an auction system was introduced to the German renewable energy sector in 2017. The more matured green energy industries had set an upper cap of installation for each year, respectively. For example, in 2019, onshore wind power's upper limit will be 2.8 GW. In 2020, its upper limit will be 2.9 GW. In order for all citizens to participate in the auction system, the German government gave privileges to small community energy projects. For example, large wind power providers have to go through lengthy verifications. They can only participate in the auction after they get permission. In contrast, small community energy projects can skip the permission procedure, and directly participate in the second-phase bidding process. Besides, the small community energy projects are allowed to win the bidding with very low prices.
However, when prices of bidding projects are too low, power plants' schedules become uncertain because whether projects will be built are not clear. Besides, some larger manufacturers cooperated with small community energy projects, in order to receive the privileges as small community energy projects. These were not fair practices and created lots of disruptions.
Scassola expressed, in 2017, most of the awarded onshore wind power bidding projects didn't earn the future permissions. Hence, these projects' finishing time will be delayed. In other words, future capacity of grid connection per year is not a sure figure. The German government is predicted to pause the privileges for small community energy projects in 2018. Even though it means that bidding prices will rise, wind farms are more likely to be constructed on time and begin to operate on time.
Giles Dickson, CEO of the European wind energy trade body WindEurope, stated that the German government should hurry up and specify the annual upper cap of installation, permission rules and bidding rules. In this way, Germany's National Energy Plan will be realized faster.
Strong development of onshore wind power will be the key, so as to achieve Germany's goal of conserving energy, reducing carbon, and becoming nuke-free. Germany hopes to actualize a nuke-free homeland by 2022, and raise the portion of renewable power to 65% by 2030. Massive wind power generation will accelerate the retirement of nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants. According to the think tank, Agora Energiewende, if Germany wants to fulfill its goal of increasing the share of its renewable power to 65% of the total power generation within 12 years, Germany's offshore wind power installation goal will have to be increased from 5 GW to 20 GW in 2030. An extra 4 GW of onshore wind power and an additional 5 GW of solar energy would have to be installed each year.
Reference:
· Germany Drives Onshore Wind Growth in Northwest Europe
· European Onshore Wind Industry To Be Driven By Policy Incentives
(Image credit: Thomas Kohler via Flickr CC BY 2.0; Article by Daisy Chuang)
