Frauke Wiese
Associate Professor
Department of Sustainable Energy
Transition, Europa-Universität Flensburg
Germany
Achieving climate neutrality is essential to mitigating climate change and preserving the foundation for a good life for everyone on Earth. Acknowledging this, the ratchet mechanism established in the Paris Agreement has helped sharpen climate protection ambitions, leading several countries to set target years for achieving climate neutrality. The target year set by the German government is 2045. A wide range of modelling exercises explore potential pathways to climate neutrality across the energy, building, industry, and agriculture sectors. Despite the diversity of approaches and solution strategies for this major challenge, most scenarios feature variations on certain key components of future energy systems. Among these, converting our electricity system to 100% renewable energies is a critical one. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has stated that the electricity sectors of industrialised countries must be climate-neutral by 2035 in order to meet the 1.5°C target. Against this backdrop, the G7 countries have committed to achieving largely climate-neutral electricity sectors by 2035. In line with this, the German government aims to reach 80% renewable energy in Germany's gross electricity consumption by 2030. During the first half of 2024, renewables – mainly from wind and solar energy, supplemented by biomass, hydropower, and a small amount of geothermal energy – accounted for approximately 57% of that consumption. Nuclear power no longer contributes to the German electricity system, as the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down in 2023. The country has also decided to gradually phase out coal, and fossil gas will no longer play a role in its renewable electricity system in the future.
In 2023, unlike the previous two years, Germany imported more electricity than it exported. This occurred because, at certain times of the day during certain periods of the year when the German grid transmits little solar and wind energy, electricity from Denmark, France, Norway, and other neighbouring countries is cheaper than that from German coal or gas-fired power plants. Despite having sufficient capacity to meet its domestic demand hour by hour, Germany’s participation in the integrated European electricity system and market means it uses the electricity with lowest marginal costs, regardless of national borders. The future development of net imports for Germany will depend on the pace of its renewable energy expansion and grid enlargement. Whether Germany becomes a net importer or exporter in a 100% renewable electricity system will depend on the energy transition paths of all European countries, with most scenarios assuming a relatively balanced export-import rate. In any case, European electricity trading is a key pillar on the path towards climate neutrality in Germany and Europe as a whole, as it enables the use of the electricity sources with lowest marginal costs – typically solar, wind and hydropower.
Currently, progress in the heat and transport sectors remains slower than in the electricity sector. In 2023, renewable energy sources accounted for approximately 19% of final energy consumption for heating and cooling in Germany, while their share in the transport sector amounted to 7.3%. A main strategy for reaching climate neutrality in these sectors is electrification. In the heat sector, heat pumps – which use ambient heat and electricity to supply process heat and heating up buildings directly or via district heat networks – are a key component for climate neutrality. These can partly be supplemented by biomass, solar thermal energy, and heat storage systems. Electrification is also a central strategy on the path to climate neutrality in the transport sector, as it utilizes the energy generated by wind and sun more efficiently than approaches that first convert such energy into e-fuels before burning it again in combustion engines.
The high level of electrification required for climate neutrality will increase the demand for electricity from wind and solar power. What cannot be covered directly by renewable electricity, such as flights, certain industrial processes, or – depending on the storage options – peak load hours in the electricity system, are expected to be covered by alternative energy carriers like hydrogen or its derivatives (such as e-kerosene for airplanes and hydrogen for industrial processes). Here again, renewable electricity and to some extent biomass are required to produce green hydrogen or other renewable energy carriers. The various scenarios for climate neutrality differ greatly regarding the proportion of energy carriers produced domestically in Germany versus those imported. However, the figures in all scenarios emphasize the significant challenges that capacity and infrastructure expansion pose.
Those challenges can be lowered by an additional strategy that is currently underrepresented despite its potential to lower risks, increase energy sovereignty, reduce costs, and increase the likelihood of a successful energy transition: namely, by reducing final energy demand not only through technical measures (efficiency) in relative terms, but also through an absolute reduction in demand for energy services. This can be achieved by setting framework conditions that make the less energy- and resource-intensive behaviour the more attractive option, while still ensuring sufficient energy services for all (sufficiency).
Currently, demand for energy services like living space heating, vehicle ownership, freight kilometers, flight kilometeres, and the use of electrical devices continues to rise both overall and on average per person in Germany and Europe. To begin to meet the challenges posed by the energy transition, these demands need to be lowered or at least stabilised while still securing a basic level of energy services for everyone. Both the social and the environmental goals can be achieved by distributing living space per person, travel distances, private car and plane usage, and product consumption more evenly within Germany and across Europe.
The European climate neutrality scenario CLEVER (Collaborative Low Energy Vision for the European Region) shows that Europe can achieve climate neutrality by 2045 without relying on nuclear energy, imports to Europe, or carbon capture and storage (CCS) if Europe can reduce its final energy demand by approximately half. Half of this reduction would be achieved through technical measures (efficiency), while the other half would result from framework conditions that prevent further increases in living space and mobility (sufficiency). A key factor for this effort to succeed is strong European solidarity, characterized by extensive cross-border exchanges of electricity and other energy sources, as well as harmonized living standards for energy services.
Thus, in addition to the strong expansion of renewable energies, the electrification of the heating and transport sectors, and European energy solidarity, decreasing final energy demand by reducing overconsumption should be a central pillar of Germany’s strategy for achieving climate neutrality.