Climate Protection

Climate protection is the force driving change in the energy sector. People in industrialised countries have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions dramatically. Emissions trading, renewable energy sources, electricity storage and energy efficiency are forcing modernisation and these are factors that should have priority in any energy concept.

Europe's goal of an 80-95% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 calls for considerable restructuring of the energy-generation, transport and consumption infrastructure. Apart from efforts to save energy and boost efficiency, the most important driving factors are emissions trading, the expansion of renewable energies and the steering of supply and demand.

The market value of carbon certificates (EUAs) has a huge impact on the economic efficiency of fossil fuel combustion plants in the energy sector, industry and also in air traffic in the future and hence on the energy mix in the EU. When it comes to generating electricity from fossil fuels, one key way to cut carbon is to use state-of-the-art combined cycle power plants instead of (hard) coal-fired power plants. One precondition for this are demanding emission reduction goals so that when EUAs becomes scarce they will reach a price level that will result in a balance in marginal costs for both technologies.

Whilst regenerative energy generation is opening up new fields of business it is also placing high demands on the grid and storage infrastructure so that together with flexible power plants a more decentralised and fluctuating feeding of regenerative electricity can be secured along with the transport of offshore wind power.

Intelligent load control systems and the fields of electromobility and energy services are becoming increasingly important. On the other hand, the utilisation of gas distribution grids will decline in the long run because heat and gas demand will be inclined to decrease and will only be partially compensated by gas-to-power.