The German government plans to adopt the draft legislation for the reform of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the grid connection package this Wednesday, 29 July, after months of delay. According to Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), these initiatives could introduce new restrictions for the further development of decentralised renewable energy generation. Instead of urgently needed legal certainty and reliable framework conditions for investments, the drafts could create additional hurdles for citizen energy projects and regional value creation.
Barbara Metz, Federal Managing Director of DUH, expressed concerns regarding the impact on citizen energy. She pointed out that the planned abolition of subsidies for small photovoltaic systems on roofs would particularly affect private homeowners, tenant electricity projects, citizen energy cooperatives, and local trades. These actors have played a significant role in promoting the energy transition for years. Furthermore, mandatory direct marketing for many small-scale systems would be both economically inefficient and practically unfeasible.
Grid Integration and Decentralised Generation
In the context of the grid connection package, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, also Federal Managing Director of DUH, sees a partial success in the weakening of the limit values for grid bottlenecks within the scope of the redispatch proviso. This adjustment is a result of public pressure. Nevertheless, the fundamental problem remains: the risk of delayed grid expansion is shifted to the operators of wind and solar plants. Although the grid package addresses the challenge of grid connections as a bottleneck, binding mechanisms are lacking. Non-binding status reports do not accelerate grid connections, and regionally divergent procedures threaten to complicate the situation.
DUH formulates clear demands to the German government. These include the establishment of uniform nationwide standards, the introduction of binding decision deadlines, and the implementation of sanctions for avoidable delays. These adjustments are necessary at the latest during the parliamentary process to ensure an effective and future-proof law that opens up the energy transition equally to all actors and enables low electricity prices.
Demands of Deutsche Umwelthilfe
- —Creation of a future-proof EEG that strengthens climate protection and investments.
- —Opening the energy transition to all stakeholders to ensure permanently low electricity prices.
- —Nationwide uniform standards and binding decision deadlines for grid connections.
- —Sanctions for avoidable delays in the grid connection procedure.
The development of legislation is therefore being closely monitored by real estate stakeholders, as the framework conditions for decentralised energy generation and the attractiveness of investments in photovoltaic systems depend directly on the final decisions. The creation of reliable and investment-friendly conditions is of significant importance for the further expansion of renewable energies and the associated increase in value of properties.
