( Clean Energy Wire ) – German industry is increasingly investing in climate protection measures, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported just before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), which kicked off on 30 November.

Climate protection investments in the manufacturing sector have increased by 74.3 percent over a decade. In 2021, manufacturers spent some 4.15 billion euros on systems to avoid emissions or use resources more sparingly, up from 2.38 billion in 2011. Legal regulations and government funding have contributed to the increase in investments, Destatis notes.

Nearly 50 percent of climate protection investments in 2021 — 2.04 billion euros [$2.22 bn.] — went to renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and photovoltaic systems.

Image by Melanie from Pixabay

Companies invested a further 1.63 billion euros ($1.77 bn) (39.2%) in increasing energy efficiency and energy saving, such as thermal insulation of buildings or systems with combined heat and power. The manufacturing and service sectors generated sales of 53 billion euros with climate protection products in 2021 – an 11.9 percent increase compared to the previous year.

The solar sector saw the biggest sales increase in 2021 with a 24 percent boost (920 million euros) for a total of 4.8 billion euros. From 2011 to 2021, sales of climate protection products – such a solar PV arrays and insulation – rose 16 percent. Nearly 55 percent of sales, or 28.6 billion euros, came from measures to increase energy efficiency in 2021.

Thermal insulation of buildings contributed substantially, generating almost 10.2 billion euros [$11.1 bn.] in sales, while the manufacture and installation of wind turbines resulted in revenue of 11.8 billion euros [$12.8 bn.].

Meanwhile, the number of employees in “green jobs,” increased by 44 percent between 2011 and 2021.

German development bank KfW recently reported that climate protection investments by domestic companies in 2022 rose by 18 percent in real terms to 72 billion euros [$78.4 bn.].

Published under a “ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .

Australians will bear yet another blow to our cost of living in July when electricity prices will surge up to 18.3%, which amounts to over A$250 per year in some cases.

This is partly due to geopolitical tensions driving up the cost of generating electricity from coal and gas – costs that are increasingly volatile – leading the Australian Energy Regulator to increase its so-called “default market offers” for electricity retailers in New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

If the Albanese government ever needed another reason to turbocharge its efforts on renewable energy and storage, this is it.

Investing in renewables, energy storage, electric vehicles and other clean industries will not only lower power prices, but will also lower emissions, increase our self-sufficiency, create new jobs, and protect us from international price shocks like we’re seeing now.

Fortunately, the Albanese government has a strong mandate for game-changing climate action this decade. The government aims for renewable energy to make up over 80% of Australia’s electricity mix by 2030, but its pledge of $20 billion for new transmission infrastructure means we can aim higher and go faster.

Holding us back, however, is continued investment in the coal industry. Indeed, doubling down on fossil fuels right now would be extraordinarily reckless from a security perspective – as the United Nations climate envoy pointed out this month, “no one owns the wind or the sun”.

So how can Australia transform into a renewable energy powerhouse? Here are three important ways the Albanese government can meet its ambition swiftly and justly.

1. Energy justice with community energy

Communities must be placed at the heart of the energy transition if we’re to see energy justice in Australia.
Energy justice is when all members of society are granted access to clean energy, particularly disadvantaged communities such as those without housing security.

One way to make this happen is with community-owned renewable energy and storage, such as wind energy co-operatives. For example, the Hepburn Wind Co-operative is a 4.1 megawatt wind farm owned by more than 2,000 community shareholders. Another example is community-owned social enterprise electricity retailers such as Enova, which has more than 1,600 community shareholders.

Labor has made a great start. Its Powering Australia plan pledges to install 400 community batteries and develop shared solar banks to give renters, people in apartments, and people who can’t afford upfront installation costs access to solar energy.

The next step should be a rapid roll out of a federal community solar scheme, similar to a program in the United States. The US Community Solar scheme is backed by legislation to create a third-party market for communities. It allows communities to own solar panels or a portion of a solar project, or to buy renewable energy with a subscription.

This means lower socio-economic households can benefit from clean, reliable and cheaper electricity from solar when they’re not able to put panels on their rooftop.

Australia needs a dedicated national policy or government body that builds on the work of other bodies, such as the Coalition for Community Energy, to govern community-based energy and enshrine the principles of energy justice.

2. Rapid uptake of offshore wind

Offshore wind farms represent a key opportunity for Australia’s decarbonisation – the combined capacity of all proposed offshore wind projects would be greater than all Australia’s coal-fired power plants.

But Australia’s offshore wind industry is only in its infancy. And while Labor’s Powering Australia plan targets manufacturing wind turbine components, it lacks policy ambition for offshore wind.

Renewable Energy Zones (a bit like the renewables equivalent of a power station) are currently being rolled out Australia wide. These should encompass offshore wind zones to encourage the rapid uptake of this vast energy source.

For example, in February, the Renewable Energy Zone in the Hunter-Central Coast region had seven offshore wind proposals and attracted over $100 billion in investment. Potential renewable energy projects in this region represent over 100,000 gigawatt hours of energy – the same as the annual output of ten coal-fired power stations.

The federal government should also set an offshore wind target to accelerate uptake. Victoria, for instance, recently announced a target of 2 gigawatts installed by 2032, 4 gigawatts by 2035, and 9 gigawatts by 2040.

Similarly, the United Kingdom recently increased its offshore wind target to 50 gigawatts by 2030 – the equivalent to powering every household in the nation, according to the UK government.

Despite its potential, Australia only introduced federal legislative framework for offshore wind last year – and it needs work. For example, the legislation doesn’t incorporate marine spatial planning, which is a process of coordinating sectors that rely on the ocean, such as marine conservation, the fishing industry, and the government.

3. Just transitions for coal communities

The Australian Energy Market Operator says the National Electricity Market could be 100% powered by renewables by 2025. Further closures of aging and unreliable coal-fired power stations are inevitable.

The government must not leave carbon-intensive regions behind in the transition to new clean industries. If we do this right, generations of Australians could be working in renewable energy, clean manufacturing, renewable hydrogen, and the extraction of critical minerals.

Creating a national coal commission could help produce a roadmap away from fossil fuels, and seize on the opportunity to create clean jobs. This is being done in Germany, where a government-appointed coal commission consulted unions, coal regions, local communities and more to develop a pathway to transition the coal industry by 2038.

We can also see this in Canada, which is developing legislation with principles of a just transition by establishing a body to provide advice on strategies supporting workers and communities.

Strong climate and energy policy will take hard work – let’s hope this truly marks the end of the climate wars and the start of Australia’s turbocharged energy transition.

Madeline Taylor, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The European Union set a goal for member states of collectively investing $314 billion in the green energy transition by 2030, with two-thirds of that to be spent in just the next 5 years, by 2027. This commitment is on top of the plans the 27 member states already had.

The new goal is to get 45% of Europe’s electricity from renewables by 2030, up from a previous goal of 40%.

In addition, the Energy ministers of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark issued a manifesto of energy independence from Russian methane gas on Wednesday, pledging themselves to create massive new wind farms in the North Sea off their coasts that will have a capacity of 65 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and 130 GW by 2050. The European Union only has about 16 gigawatts of offshore wind installed at the moment, so they are planning to increase that by almost ten times by 2050.

The Biden adminstration’s goal for offshore wind by 2030 is only 30 gigawatts, so these four countries are aiming higher than the entire US.

Denmark and Germany already had big plans for expanding offshore wind but they are now increasing their goals. The four states are also innovating in making plans for multiple connections so that the wind farms will supply a common four-country grid. In fact, they say they want to work toward a pan-Europe grid.

They also want to innovate: “We will monitor the development of technology for solar photovoltaic within offshore wind farms.” Wind turbine/ PV solar hybrid installations produce energy more efficiently and more inexpensively.

Denmark has an artificial wind energy island on the drawing board, but now Belgium will also construct one. Indeed, all four countries will “begin planning for multiple energy hubs and islands.”

The four countries also pledged to speed up permitting, a major bottleneck for wind farms in Europe. The ministers insist, “renewable energy should be considered as being in the overriding public interest and serving public safety.”

Nikolaus J. Kurmayer at Euractiv.com quotes European commission President Ursula von der Leyen as saying, “Nowadays we have permitting times between six and nine years.” She said that these would be reduce to one year in certain “go-to” areas, i.e. high-priority green zones, including the country of Denmark.

If these plans are implemented, they will likely have unforeseen side effects, such as impelling technological innovation by European scientists and companies in the green energy space, and increasing the efficiency and lowering the cost of wind and solar.

Green hydrogen technology can help reduce emissions from industry, transport and heating in the German Ruhr region up to 72 percent by 2050 compared to 2018, the private industry-sponsored German Economic Institute (IW) shows in a report commissioned by the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR). The IW looked at six different scenarios for the development and use of hydrogen in the western German metropolitan region, home to five million inhabitants and many power plants as well as steel and chemical industries.

Depending on the scenario, use of green hydrogen in all sectors except the energy industry could reduce the annual CO₂ emissions by 19.5 to 25.5 million metric tonnes, according to the IW. This corresponds to a reduction of 55 to 72 percent by 2050 compared to 2018, based on emissions data from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the IW writes. “Provided that it is produced green, hydrogen can become the central technology of the Ruhr metropole in achieving the climate targets,” said Hanno Kempermann, head of Industries and Regions at IW.

Green hydrogen made with renewable energy is considered key to solving some of the energy transition’s challenges, such as decarbonising industry processes and long-haul freight transport. It is often portrayed as a silver bullet, which would allow current practices to largely remain unchanged while simply switching to a climate-friendly fuel, thus allowing industrial production to continue in Germany.

However, the production and use of hydrogen is inefficient compared to using the renewable electricity directly across the sectors. In addition, for some time Germany is unlikely to be able to produce sufficiant amounts of renewable electricity itself. Thus, many consider green hydrogen a precious energy source that should only be used where absolutely necessary.

The IW also states that “the production and use of hydrogen from renewable energy sources is not yet economically viable,” and a rapid market ramp-up of the technology is needed. The RVR argues the Ruhr region is a convincing location to expand the hydrogen market due to the density of industrial plants, comprehensive infrastructure and research institutes in the area.

“These prerequisites favour the development of an internationally oriented hydrogen economy here locally and hold enormous employment potential,” said RVR regional director Karola Geiss.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Green Hydrogen and Germany’s Energy Future

I have a big problem with the index, though. One of its criteria is technological innovation in the area of green energy. These are the bases for the rankings:

• Carbon emissions: Total emissions as well as the degree of change in emissions in transportation, industry, and agriculture

• Energy transition: The contribution and growth rate of renewable energy sources

• Green society: A range of indicators covering net forestation, development of green buildings, recycling, and consumption of animal products

• Clean innovation: The relative number of green patents, investment in cross-border clean energy, investment in food technology

• Climate policy: Policy commitment toward climate targets, carbon finance programs, sustainable agriculture, and the use of covid stimulus for a green recovery

I object to the “clean innovation” criterion. Obviously Morocco won’t file for as many patents as advanced industrial countries.

A lot of these criteria give countries like the United States a pass. The US has no offshore wind, almost no utility scale solar, and isn’t making full use of its massive onshore Midwest wind corridor. We put out over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year most years, the second worst offender in the world. We’ve been AWOL for four years from the Paris Climate Accord. The United States should be dead last on any green futures index, but here it comes in 40 of 76 countries ranked. Maybe we have some great patents in the area of green energy. It isn’t enough, so far.

Yes, I’m calling the MIT Green Futures Index Orientalist.

President Biden wants to implement an ambitious green energy program, and we’re all rooting for him, but so far it is mostly a hope and a prayer.

Morocco comes in 26 in the Tech Review index. Here’s a poor country that in 13 years has gone from having almost no renewables to having them provide 37 percent of its electricity. It is aiming for 52 percent by 2030, which is admittedly less ambitious than its performance so far warrants. It only puts out on the order of 61 million metric tons of CO2 every year. (Given it only has 11% of the population of the US, that would be like 671 million metric tons in US terms; in other words, a small fraction of our emissions).

I just don’t think the United States is in the same league as Morocco when it comes to its dedication to a green energy future.

Morocco’s Noor Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, on the edge of the Sahara, powers the equivalent of 2 million homes (the country has 7.7 million households).

Safaa Kasraoui writes at Moroccan World News,

“During the inauguration of Nestle’s solar project in El Jadida on Tuesday, [Morocco’s Minister of Energy Aziz] Rabbah said that the installed capacity of renewable energy sources in Morocco amounts to 3,950 megawatts. The number represents about 37% of the total installed electric power or 20% of the country’s electricity demand.”

The country is putting nearly $6 billion into more renewable projects.

The MIT report did acknowledge all this in a sidebar:

“Over a decade ago, the King of Morocco began a national debate about the future of energy, resulting in a fundamental policy redesign and a goal that renewables would produce 42% of the country’s power by 2020—a target that has now been raised to 52% by 2030. In addition to developing strong wind and solar sectors, says Said Mouline, CEO of the Morocco Agency for Energy Efficiency (AMEE), Morocco has also successfully driven down cost. “At less than $0.03 per kilowatt hour, renewables are now our cheapest way to produce electricity.”

Coal was once considered the cheapest fuel for electricity, at $0.05 per kilowatt hour. If Morocco can get electricity from wind and solar for about half that, it is way ahead of the game.

The MIT Tech Review report also admits that Morocco has eliminated fossil fuel subsidies, something that the United States has definitely not done. They have put in 40,000 solar-powered water irrigation pumps on farms, retiring those powered by natural gas. They are trying to convert their steel plants to electric arc technology powered by solar panels.

They quote Mr. Mouline again,

“Mouline envisions Morocco becoming a regional climate advocate within Africa. “Today in Africa we have 600 million people who don’t have electricity, and we have the tools and capabilities to help leverage renewables to bridge that gap.” AMEE created a capacity-building center in Marrakesh to train Africans from other countries in areas like renewable electrification and sustainable pumping for agriculture.”

Morocco’s role here is huge, since getting developing economies to go green now will prevent a further wave of carbon dioxide emissions as they industrialize.

Morocco now has a factory to produce its own wind turbine blades, with 60% of them to be exported to Europe. It is also looking into green hydrogen as a storage mechanism, jointly with European partners, the report says.

I really think Morocco deserves to be much higher on this list. And the US deserves to be number 76.

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Bonus Video:

KiAfrica: The BIGGEST Concentrated Solar Plant in the World is in Africa I Morocco

German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp will supply an electrolyser for a massive international green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia with the capacity to produce up to 650 tonnes of the climate-neutral gas per day with wind and solar power installations.

The German economy ministry (BMWi) announced that it will support the “Element One” power-to-X project in the context of its national hydrogen strategy in a bid to prepare a “global market scale-up” by backing Thyssenkrupp’s contribution of an electrolysis module with a capacity of 20 megawatts.

The entire electrolysis project will eventually be powered by up to four gigawatts of renewable energy installations. It will be built by 2025 in Saudi Arabia’s NEOM innovation centre in the country’s North-West.

Besides green hydrogen, the plant is also planned to produce up to 3,000 tonnes of ammoniac per day, which would be shipped to other locations and later converted into hydrogen for use in transport and other sectors, the ministry said.

The project in Saudi Arabia is the second hydrogen production installation abroad to be supported by Germany’s hydrogen strategy. The government has set aside nine billion euros for implementing its strategy, two billion euros of which are earmarked for selected projects in partner countries.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Middle East Energy: “Middle East prepares for Green hydrogen revolution”

( Clean Energy Wire) – A new project launched by Germany’s development cooperation organisation GIZ is supposed to prepare the ground for large-scale imports to sustain the country’s budding hydrogen industry as early as 2021, Klaus Stratmann writes in Handelsblatt.

The project, dubbed H2 Global and launched by the GIZ and the German hydrogen and fuel cell association DWV, is providing the blueprint for the economy ministry in its bid to establish an international market for green hydrogen trading, which will be crucial for Germany to procure the volumes of synthetic gas made with renewable energy sources to decarbonise industrial processes, aviation and other sectors of the economy.

H2 Global is supposed to be endowed with 1.5 billion euros through a foundation, and industrial companies like Bayer, BASF, Lufthansa, Siemens and Thyssen-Krupp are among those interested in backing it, Stratmann writes.

Germany has earmarked a total of nine billion euros in the context of its National Hydrogen Strategy, which foresees international partnerships with countries where green hydrogen can be produced “efficiently” thanks to their large solar, wind or hydropower potential. According to the GIZ and the DWV, this group of countries could include Chile, Brazil, South Africa or Ukraine, the article says. Estimates about Germany’s potential for self-supply of hydrogen say domestic renewable power production could merely cover about 30 percent of the quantities needed to achieve the strategy’s goals, Stratmann adds.

Environment minister Svenja Schulze announced at last year’s UN climate conference in Madrid that Germany will establish a central hub to coordinate its international ambitions to push the production and trade of synthetic fuels made with renewable power run by GIZ.

In the context of its hydrogen strategy, the government has eyed several hydrogen projects abroad with countries like Australia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but researchers have suggested that the focus on imports could overlook vast potentials for domestic production.

Benjamin Wehrmann is staff Correspondent for Clean Energy Wire. Before joining CLEW’s editorial staff, he worked for the AFP news agency in Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt, reporting mainly on domestic politics and economics. He also used to work for the German n-tv news channel as well as for dpa news agency in France. Benjamin holds a joint degree in political science from University of Bath, Sciences Po Paris and FU Berlin and a degree in economics and social sciences from FU Bolzano.

Via Clean Energy Wire

Germany Green Hydrogen