Germany Vows to Eliminate Bureaucracy to Allow Solar Installations to Soar
ON 05/22/2023 AT 10:08 AMThe country with the biggest GDP in all the EU has announced plans to grow photovoltaic power capacity for the first time by 10% or more this year, as part an overall plan to become carbon neutral by 2045. It plans to simplify permitting rules radically to allow that to happen.
Robert Habeck, Germany's current Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, shown speaking in Kiel in 2021. Image: Michael Brandtner, CC
Solar panels are now priced at less than $.20/watt in China. Shipping adds about another 25% to the cost. This makes solar by far the least expensive way to produce electricity and a no-brainer for any country wanting to allow greener forms of energy production. The greatest obstacle to deploying more solar energy in most countries is government, and the German government has been one of the most obstructive. That has just changed.
The shift represents a dramatic about-face for a country known far more for its extreme bureaucratic approach to almost everything new.
That is the message that Robert Habeck, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection wanted business to hear, as he spoke at May 5, 2023’s Conference of the Green parliamentary group "Green Warmth for All" - Climate-Fair, Social, Environmentally Compatible, at the Heinrich Boell Foundation, in Berlin.
As with many European Union countries, Germany already set ambitious targets for the “greening” of its country. It has set an objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2045, with an important interim step of having 215 GW of solar power generation capacity in place by 2030, to help make the 2045 goal even possible.
That compares to Germany having just 50 GW of solar power output as of the end of 2022, so this would represent a jump of over a factor of four in total photovoltaic energy available by just seven years from now.
It also represents more than doubling the amount of renewable energy in general the country would have to produce.
In the renewables categories, currently 23% of all of Germany’s power comes from wind and just slightly over 10% of its needs from solar.
As Minister Habeck knows well, the only way to increase solar power installations by that factor of over four times by 2030 is to reduce or wholly eliminate much of the old highly regulated and administratively constipated approach to new construction and business growth in federal parliamentary Republic of Germany. To that end, the Minister recently announced a major restructuring of how planning and securing approvals for new photovoltaic installations would be carried out in the future.
Habeck, a member of the Green Party who holds solar development growth as a key part of his party’s political platform, also announced measures aimed at providing direct assistance for the solar construction industry itself. One of those will provide direct assistance for those looking to manufacture photovoltaic panels within Germany, despite this being a high-risk venture in a global marketplace where China already produces over 70% of the global supply of these. A more promising part of his platform will help support training of workers in the installation and set-up of new solar energy farm facilities in the country.
Habeck also plans to make it easier for new installation venues for solar panels. One that is currently gaining momentum is placing solar panels in floating installations on lakes, such as in Haltern, Germany, where the country’s biggest water-based solar farm is currently operating.
The floating solar plant on the Silbersee III in Haltern am See, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, shown here under construction in April 2022. Image: Dietmar Rabach, CC
The Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection also plans to make up for some major administrative stumbles he made early in his tenure in this new position. After being named to run this ministry at the end of 2021, he was charged with nepotism and delivering on political favors as he filled positions ranging from low-level administrative roles all the way to the head of the Green Energy Agency, a major government policy development entity.
Cutting the red tape that goes to those administrators will go a long way to restore confidence in Haback’s leadership in this area. Especially if as expected he is able to make way for putting in place over 10 GW of new solar power this year, a number which would represent almost a 43% jump over 2022’s net add of 7 GW last year.
Considering that the country has already managed to add 2.7 GW of solar energy production capacity in the first three months of this year alone, Habeck and the country of Germany are already on track to exceed the country’s original goal of 9 GW added and could blow it out to 11 GW or more by the end of December.
