German energy minister takes aim at solar – will wind be next?

Germany’s economics and energy minister Katharina Reiche wants to end feed-in tariffs (FITs) for rooftop solar installations, which are the backbone of the recent solar boom in Europe’s largest economy.

It is not the first time Reiche has attacked Germany’s Energiewende – its energy transition from nuclear and fossil to renewable energies – and raises the question whether wind power will be her next target.

Newly installed small PV installations of about up to 10kW are currently granted a FIT of €78.60 ($91.25) per MWh, which allows homeowners to pay off their rooftop solar plant in a couple of years.

Germany’s solar federation BSW-Solar warns that cutting support for private installations would harm a sector with 150,000 jobs and endanger the country’s climate targets. The BSW also cites a recent poll that only four in ten homeowners would put PV panels on their roof if there were no support.

“The cuts in feed-in tariffs for rooftop solar systems announced by Ms. Reiche give the impression of a deliberate obstruction of the Energiewende.

“A deterioration in wind power is also being discussed. As a result, the expansion of renewable energies is likely to decline noticeably.”

'Excessive renewables target'

It isn’t certain that Reiche will be able to convince Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), who were surprised by the suggestion to end support for rooftop solar.

But the attack on small PV comes after Reiche since the inauguration of the new government in May has questioned aspects of Germany’s energy transition several times, in what seems to be becoming a pattern.

That could mean that any build-up of onshore solar or wind and offshore wind could be held up until the grid can take up all new power production.

Reiche seems to think otherwise.

The energy minister at an event last month blamed the renewables expansion for a massive grid build-up, with higher grid levies on top of consumers’ power bills due to a “completely unrealistic, even completely excessive renewable energy target”. She suggested introducing ‘construction costs subsidies’ to be paid by developers for their grid connection.

Monitoring and targets

Reiche, since she took office, also repeatedly pushed for the construction of 20GW of new gas-fired power stations to back up renewables at times of little wind or sun, earning her the nickname of ‘gas Kathy’. Unfortunately, unlike earlier proposals for backup power, the latest gas expansion drive didn’t mention any longer that the new plants should be ‘hydrogen-ready’.

The energy ministry has commissioned a report on the status of the Energiewende from the Energy Economics Institute (EWI) at the University of Cologne, which is slated to be ready at the end of the summer.

While officially, the ‘monitoring’ is supposed to determine the actual future electricity demand and point to potentials for cost reduction, Reiche seems to intend to use it as a tool to reshape the energy transition in a way that could favour new fossil generation capacity instead of an accelerated wind and solar build-out.

Under the previous climate minister, Robert Habeck from the Green Party (now in opposition), the government had presented a strategy to boost the country’s onshore wind capacity to 160GW by 2035 (up from 65GW now), which would require 10GW in annual additions from next year on. The government then also set a 70GW offshore wind target for offshore wind (from 9.2GW now) and aimed at 215GW of solar by 2030 (from above 100GW now).

The wind industry has so far kept rather quiet about the prospect of Reiche slashing wind targets, possibly in order not to rock the boat with the new government.

Maybe it should rethink that strategy.