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Berlin has agreed to spend €16 billion to build four major natural gas plants to meet electricity demand in a major overhaul of the country’s energy grid.
In a statement Monday, officials said the new strategy came “in addition to the consistent expansion of renewable energies,” and was key to ensuring steady power supplies “even in times where there is little sun and wind.”
The ruling coalition reached the decision following talks between Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party and the economy minister, Green Party politician Robert Habeck. The deal provides for a market-based capacity-boosting mechanism to expand electricity generation by 2028.
The government has described the fossil gas power plants as “modern, highly flexible and climate-friendly” because they will be capable of conversion to use clean-burning hydrogen gas produced from renewable sources. The plants are projected to produce up to 10 gigawatts of electricity. Tenders for the projects will begin soon.
German energy firm Uniper, which expects to be involved in the construction, said it was “relieved” that the coalition had reached a political consensus on the new plants, adding that “swift action is urgently needed because the approval process and the actual construction of power plants and storage facilities will take several years.”
Environmental groups remain skeptical, however, with Greenpeace denouncing the strategy as a “perfect example of how the hype around hydrogen is just a smokescreen for more fossil gas.”
Similar schemes elsewhere in the EU have also prompted a backlash from climate activists. Last week, French energy giant Engie was given approval to build a 500 megawatt gas plant near the city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, even though some 2,000 residents had signed a petition opposing the scheme. Engie insists the facility, on the site of a former coal-fired generator, will be a “hybrid plant” and could be converted to use hydrogen in future.
Germany shut down its final three nuclear reactors last April, despite warnings that it would cause more fossil fuel to be burned. Last year, a report from Berlin’s own climate agency said the country was likely to miss its target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 percent by 2030.
In September, Scholz dismissed calls from his own coalition to restart the reactors in light of the energy crisis, declaring: “Nuclear energy is over.”
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