Reuters and other news agencies have reported that the German government is drafting a “Climate Action Plan 2022” that aims to increase the domestic installed capacity for onshore wind generation to 95GW and the domestic installed capacity for PV generation to 150GW by 2030. The previous targets under EEG 2021 for onshore wind and solar PV were 71GW and 100GW respectively by 2030. The proposed plan, which includes other measures, represents the latest effort by the German government to expedite progress in expanding the share of renewable energies in the country’s electricity supply.
According to the coverage by different media outlets, the draft plan will be a part of the revised version of the existing Climate Action Program 2030 that the government is working on. Germany’s highest court recently ruled that its government is not doing enough to meet the obligations of the Paris Agreement. In response, the government has pulled forward the deadline for achieving carbon neutrality by five years to 2045. German news agency DPA reported that the draft plan to raise the renewable installation targets is now being reviewed internally among officials of different ministries, and the final version of the plan will be released in late June. However, the budget of the new plan, along with the rest of the revised Climate Action Program, is not expected to be approved by the federal parliament until after the federal election that will be held this September.
Besides expanding the deployment of renewable generation systems, the German government is also increasing the funding for climate protection. For 2022, the German government will allocate 7.8 billion euros for sustaining its programs for combatting climate change. Of that amount, 2.5 billion euros will be used to refurbish buildings, and 1.8 billion euros will be used to subsidize electric vehicle purchases. Additionally, the German government will significantly increase its support for domestic industries such as steel and cement manufacturing to reduce their carbon footprints.
When the German government pulled forward the carbon neutrality target date in May, it also introduced bolder steps for cutting carbon emissions and raising the installed capacity of renewable energies. They include the targets of reducing domestic carbon emissions to 65% below the 1990 level by 2030 and a further reduction to 88% by 2040. Previously, the 2030 target was 55% below the 1990 level. According to Reuters’s article on the draft plan, publicly available data show that Germany’s onshore wind and PV installation figures came to 54.4GW and 52GW respectively in 2020. Earlier in May, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries released a statement calling for raising domestic PV installations to at least 150GW by 2030.