Electricity generated on your own roof
When it comes to decisive action against climate change, many hopes are currently pinned on the new coalition government.
Tim Loppe, press officer at Naturstrom AG, told us what active climate protection policy means in practice.
When the green electricity provider Naturstrom was founded in Düsseldorf more than 20 years ago, it did pioneering work: the topic of renewable energies was in its early stages when the electricity market was liberalised in 1998. “Before that, there had been no independent electricity providers, certainly not for green electricity. Sixteen private citizens from the environmental movement therefore seized the opportunity to offer an alternative to the municipal utilities with electricity from exclusively renewable sources,” explains Tim Loppe, press spokesman for Naturstrom AG.
At the time, green electricity was a niche market, and changing electricity suppliers was completely new territory for everyone involved. It was not until 2005 that a change in the law entrusted the Federal Network Agency with the task of regulating the electricity market and ensuring uniform and non-discriminatory switching processes - an important prerequisite for Naturstrom AG's rapid growth in the years that followed. The real starting signal, however, came with the publication of the UN climate report in 2007, which confirmed that man-made climate change was progressing faster than previously assumed. It changed the awareness of many consumers and gave the green electricity market a boost.
Tim Loppe, Press spokesman, Naturstrom AG
“Before 1998, there had been no independent electricity providers, certainly not for green electricity.”
Now Naturstrom has 300,000 customers, mostly private households but also more than 20,000 commercial customers, connected to the grid. “This makes us the largest independent green electricity provider in Germany,” says Tim Loppe. According to Statista.de, the share of renewable energies in electricity generation in Germany was around 49.5 per cent in January 2022, and 45.7 per cent overall in 2021. In 2019, after all, 12.67 million people in Germany were already using green electricity, a number that has risen constantly since 2015.
Naturstrom AG not only has green electricity in its portfolio, but also biogas and operates its own solar and wind parks, as well as offering a range of e-mobility products and a local heat supply in municipalities via local heating networks. The fact that many projects for new green power plants are delayed for years by excessive bureaucracy and endless approval procedures is unfortunately a reality. Is there hope that Robert Habeck, as Minister for the Economy and Climate Protection, will soon change these regulations? “Of course we hope some things will move forward that were not exactly prioritised by the old government,” says Tim Loppe.
Die Politik ist gefordert, den Bau neuer Windkraftanlagen wie dieser hier in Trendelburg, Hessen, zu unterstützen. Stehen diese Anlagen einmal, produzieren sie nahezu kostenlos Strom.
He counters the initial fears of many consumers that the change of government would mainly bring rising energy prices. “Prices have risen sharply for consumers, but the causes lie elsewhere. We have been experiencing a crisis in fossil fuels since the autumn. Natural gas in particular has been more expensive than ever on the energy markets for a few months now. This not only affects heating costs, because gas is also used to generate electricity.”
The high gas prices, for which there were several cases particularly in the last few months, are the cause for the record prices of up to 35 cents per kilowatt hour on the electricity exchange, according to Tim Loppe: the war in Ukraine has been driving prices since the end of February, while other factors were the determining factors in autumn 2021. These included the economic recovery after the lockdowns in 2020 as well as droughts in China and the USA, which led to hydroelectric power plants being able to supply less electricity and more gas being imported instead. In addition, the gas storage tanks in Germany were low at the beginning of the heating season, also due to the cold winter of 2020/21.
“In the heating market in particular, but also in the electricity market, we in Germany are still far too dependent on fossil fuels and are therefore vulnerable to price caprices on the commodity markets,” Loppe sums up. “With renewable energies we make ourselves more independent. No one can take wind and sunshine away from us. And modern wind and solar farms produce electricity much cheaper than any newly built coal or gas-fired power plant.”
He also does not see Germany's exit from lignite production and the gradual shutdown of nuclear power plants as a problem when it comes to the country's future electricity supply. “Germany is a net exporter of electricity, which means we generate more than we consume. Nevertheless, some things will have to change in the electricity system if the fossil power plants really do go off the grid. For us, this means a definite mandate: to build more green power plants! Sure, that won't happen overnight. But that's precisely why we need to significantly increase our efforts now.”
“By 2030, 80 percent of our electricity
in Germany should come from renewable sources.”
Here, he says, it is above all the economy and politics that are called upon. “By 2030, 80 percent of our electricity in Germany should come from renewable sources. The federal government must quickly create the conditions so that companies can better invest in renewables - because that's what they want! It is not only the energy sector that is keen to get started; companies in other sectors also want to invest themselves or have green energy supplied to them. Initiatives such as the German Sustainable Business Association or the KlimaWirtschaft Foundation, in which Dax companies are also members, provide many examples for this,” Tim Loppe is certain.
Consequently, Naturstrom AG is also optimistic about the future, especially when it comes to decentralised power supply. “Here we see really great potential for generating renewable energy directly in the cities. There are fantastic opportunities for this, especially for photovoltaic systems. If solar power can be used directly in the household grid, people in apartment buildings will also benefit immediately from the energy turnaround. If concepts like this become widespread, we will have made significant progress,” says Tim Loppe. •
Words Katja Vaders
Pictures Naturstrom AG