Extrapolating on the government's climate package, EWI experts estimate that Germany's annual gross power consumption will reach 748 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2030, a 26 percent rise compared to 595 TWh in 2018. "This is due to the desired breakthrough of electric mobility, but we also expect a significant increase in electricity consumption in the heating sector," explained EWI analyst Max Gierkink.
The German government, meanwhile, has projected gross power consumption to fall by 5 TWh by 2030. Hence, Germany would have to make "very, very large efficiency gains", according to Agora Energiewende estimates to meet its renewable energy expansion targets.
EWI estimates that renewable power production will increase by 53 percent by 2030, but when factoring in the country’s rising energy demand, the additional renewable power supply will not be enough to cover just half of the country's power consumption. Germany would consequently fail its target of a 65 percent share of renewables in gross power consumption 2030 by a considerable margin.
In 2019, renewables made up 42.8 percent of Germany's gross power consumption, compared to 38.2 percent in 2018, preliminary data from BDEW showed in December. Despite this nominal rise, there was a considerable drop in onshore wind power expansion – the central technology of Germany's energy transition. According to BDEW, 3.7 Gigawatts (GW) of new turbines have to be added every year to reach the country's 2030 renewables goal of 65 percent in power demand.
Natural gas to become second pillar of German energy transition
The use of gas from all sources will become more important as Germany seeks to decarbonise is economy, BDEW forecast, noting the continuous expansion of wind and solar power would remain “the Energiewende's main challenge.”
Given that Germany will end nuclear power after 2022 and is aiming to gradually phase out coal by 2038 at the latest, natural gas-fuelled electricity generation is likely to become "the Energiewende's second pillar", says the new head of BDEW, Kerstin Andreae.
She hailed the economy ministry's decision to classify gaseous energy carriers as a necessary long-term component of Germany's energy transition as a "milestone” for the large scale roll-out of power-to-gas technology to produce hydrogen from excess wind and solar power supply. "We need to create a market for green gas," Andreae said, adding that the use of green gases for sector coupling measures and as an energy storage mechanism had to be developed further.
The share of gas in Germany’s power generation mix has risen to 15 percent in 2019, up from 13 percent in the previous year. More emission-intensive hard coal and lignite declined by 15 percent to currently about 28 percent today when counted together, while the share of renewables in Germany’s gross power output climbed to 40 percent.