POWER May 2013 - 44

ENERGY POLICY
benefit, could be built so that about 10 TWh
to 20 TWh (26% to 52%) of Germany's surplus
electricity could be stored there.
That front, too, is seeing progress. In
March, Norwegian and Dutch power grid
operators, Statnett and TenneT, along with
German development bank KfW, announced
plans to build NORD.LINK, a 1,400-MW
high-voltage undersea connection. A final decision
wouldn't be made until 2014, though
developers have announced planning of a
second €2 billion link, NorGer, that could
possibly materialize within a decade.
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that until
at least 2020, storage capacities in the Alps
could help store surplus PV electricity from
southern Germany. But, notwithstanding the
time and cost required to build new pumped
storage capacity, several experts have warned
that the role Scandinavia can play in such a
scenario is unclear. Norway, for example,
holds hydro reservoirs of 84 TWh-half of all
Europe's hydro storage capacity-and already
acts as a " green battery " for Denmark and the
Netherlands. Hydro storage expansion would
need political action on Norway's current electricity
policy that far exceeds 2020 and would
have to consider a multitude of technical, economic,
and environmental implications.
Carbon Commitments and a
Dash to Coal
One of the EU's core member states, Germany
has been at the forefront of the continent's efforts
to curb carbon emissions, spearheading
the European energy and climate package
in 2007 under the German EU presidency.
The so-called " 20-20-20 " package called for
greenhouse gas reductions of at least 20%
of 1990 levels by 2020, increasing use of renewables
to 20% of total energy production
by 2020, and cutting energy consumption by
20% of projected 2020 levels by improving
energy efficiency. Yet Germany's own climate
targets, driven by environmental movements
in the Green Party, are more ambitious than
the EU's: a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions by 2020 and 80% to 95% in 2050.
Though Energiewende was designed to complement
those goals, Germany's carbon dioxide
(CO2
) emissions are on the rise, as the Environment
Ministry noted this February, increasing
1.6% (932 million tonnes of CO2
equivalent
per year). The ministry, which brushed off the
increase, saying the nation had " comfortably "
met its Kyoto Protocol targets, coming in 193
million tonnes per year under its target by the
commitment date in 2012, pegged the increase
on unusually cold weather and heightened use
of coal. Had shuttered nuclear reactors operated
as planned, critics pointed out, and Energiewende
not been instituted, Germany could have
reduced its carbon emissions to an all-time low
of 897 million tonnes per year.
But Germany needs coal, experts say. In
the two years since the nuclear moratorium,
the nation has urgently needed new baseload
power plants to shoulder the country's annual
peak load of 80 GW. Only about 12 GW of
the nation's reliably available capacity of 160
GW is currently met by renewables, which
includes wind power to a minor extent, and is
mostly hydropower. " How great this need for
conventional power plant capacity actually
is depends on a number of variables, " says
the Economics Ministry, adding that " it is .
. . very difficult to put a figure on the power
plant capacity needed. " The future expansion
of renewable energy plants, the possibility of
using an interregional system to balance fluctuating
supply and demand in the electricity
market, and the continued development of
storage technologies are just some of the factors
that come into play, it adds.
Environmental and citizen groups have
launched numerous legal challenges, and successfully
stalled development of several coal
projects. Meanwhile, rejection of a draft bill to
* Rigorously tested for over
60 years for exceptional
performance
* Resistant to harsh
chemicals, high
temperatures, and high
pressures
* Long service life
* Globally
available
CIRCLE 28 ON READER SERVICE CARD
44
www.powermag.com
POWER | May 2013
http://www.powermag.com
POWER May 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER May 2013
