SDG 7
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030
§ Deletion of the law for the promotion of hydropower § 40 EEG and tightening of the law for the order of the water balance in the Water Resources Act § 35 Use of hydropower
The Water Framework Directive and the Water Resources Act (WHG) require the establishment of a good water status or significant improvements and the existence of a good ecological potential, the Flora-Fauna-Habitat (FFH) Directive the good conservation status. The prohibition of deterioration applies. The establishment of fish-biological and morphological passability of flowing waters for fish and other aquatic organisms has priority (this also applies to solids). This applies not only to fish passage, but in particular to the harmless descent of fish. Up to now, fish passage at numerous hydropower plants still leads to high, cumulative losses. In addition, impoundment causes a deterioration of water quality by reducing oxygen input. Electricity from new hydropower plants should therefore no longer be remunerated under the Renewable Energy Sources Act, no more new hydropower plants should be built, and remuneration for existing plants should be tied to proof of ecological quality. It is ten times cheaper to save one kilowatt hour of electricity than to generate it with small hydropower. Moreover, we can save ten times more electricity than hydropower can supply in total. In order to successfully implement the energy turnaround, we are not dependent on the further expansion of hydropower. This must be accompanied by a tightening of the WHG on hydropower utilization.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.bund.net/energiewende/erneuerbare-energien/wasserkraft/
The coal phase-out law passed in 2020 stipulates that by 2022 the share of coal-fired power generation from hard coal and lignite is to be reduced to 15 gigawatts each. Further reductions will follow by 2030: To around eight gigawatts of capacity for hard coal and nine gigawatts of capacity for lignite. Hard coal-fired power plants are to be decommissioned via tendering procedures. Employees in opencast mining or at a coal-fired power plant will receive an adjustment allowance if they lose their jobs and are at least 58 years old. Emission allowances released by the closure of power plants must be cancelled. In addition, the goal of meeting 65 percent of energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030 is now written into law. The law is not in line with the decisions of the Coal Commission. Germany will only be able to achieve the greenhouse gas neutrality needed to stop the climate crisis if the country has phased out coal by 2030. This would be possible without further ado in terms of technology, structural policy and the energy industry, as the experts in the Coal Commission have already repeatedly stated. With the necessary increase in the European climate target for 2030, coal-fired power generation in Germany will end much earlier than stipulated in the law. A reform of the coal phase-out law must be consistently oriented toward the Paris Agreement and Germany's necessary commitments. This includes, among other things, a deletion of the "energy economic necessity" in the law.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.bund.net/kohle/kohle-ausstieg/kohleausstiegsgesetz/
https://www.dnr.de/fileadmin/Positionen/2021-DNR_Kernforderungen_zur_Bundestagswahl.pdf
§ Reform of the coal phase-out law
§ Law against energy poverty
Energy prices, which have been rising for years, have led to low-income households having difficulty paying their electricity bills or heating their homes adequately. The result is a negative impact on mental and physical health. In particular, measures such as interruption of electricity supply ("power cuts") have been criticized. Energy poverty has many facets: Risk of poverty due to high energy prices, debt problems of private households, critical living situations, poor housing conditions or general income poverty. For women in particular, energy poverty is an economic, health and social risk - and one that has so far been little visible. The gender dimension must therefore also be taken into account in legislation and support programs. Good cooperation between all actors (job center, social welfare office, debt counseling, other social assistance from welfare associations, consumer centers, energy suppliers) is enormously important for early assistance. However, energy poverty is above all an income problem that must be addressed with a law against energy poverty. The state's social security systems should ensure that households can pay their electricity bills and heat needs from them. The unequal treatment of electricity and heat in the social security systems must be abolished. Reducing the price of electricity by reforming the levy and apportionment system can provide significant relief for low-income households, since it is precisely here that the share of energy costs in household income is higher than for high-income households.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/676950/1a9832351ce7317239b355b5d46be766/sv-busch-data.pdf
According to § 1, the purpose of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) is, in particular, to enable sustainable development of energy supply in the interest of climate and environmental protection, to reduce the economic costs of energy supply also by including long-term external effects, to conserve fossil energy resources and to promote the further development of technologies for the generation of electricity from renewable energies. § Section 2 of the Renewable Energy Sources Act introduces as principles of the law effectiveness (completeness and quality of target achievement), efficiency (least possible effort to achieve the target) and the preservation of the diversity of actors. What is needed now is a renewed amendment of the EEG with an increase in the expansion targets for renewable energies to a Paris-compatible path. By 2035, electricity demand must be completely covered by renewable energies. This requires an annual increase in the expansion of renewables. By 2030, this requires an annual expansion of renewables of at least 10 GW photovoltaics and 7 GW7GW onshore wind energy. Further promotion of renewables also requires, among other things, the creation of a solar obligation for all suitable roofs in new construction and roof renovation, uncomplicated self-consumption rules for citizens, tender exemptions for solar plants under one megawatt and wind power plants under 18 megawatts, and the removal of all barriers and the equality of individual self-consumption, collective self-consumption and tenant electricity. There is a need for binding federal-state coordination with clear land use allocations for the environmentally compatible expansion of onshore wind energy, for example with a wind-on-land law, and the increase and legal anchoring of the energy savings target to at least 40 percent by 2030, as well as binding, sector-specific primary and final energy savings targets.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.dnr.de/fileadmin/Positionen/2021-DNR_Kernforderungen_zur_Bundestagswahl.pd