Opposition leader Christian Baldauf has accused the state government of lacking a plan in energy policy. “Unfortunately, the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate only looks to Berlin and has no plan of its own,” said the party and parliamentary group leader of the CDU Rhineland-Palatinate of the German Press Agency.
“The state government is something like a dachshund with two tails,” criticized Baldauf. “Greens and FDP are afraid that one of them could become superfluous, that the dachshund will drop them.” Therefore, the two smaller governing parties are “little active” in the coalition led by the SPD. With the FDP, he misses the promised accents in road construction and digitization. “The Greens are idly watching that hardly any new wind turbines will be built in Rhineland-Palatinate this year either.”
Wind turbines have become more and more efficient in recent years, said Baldauf. “There is great potential there, which I also see in photovoltaics.” When using solar energy, there must be significantly better support from the state, which not only supports storage systems, but also private investment in PV systems. “Similarly, there must finally be more speed with PV systems on state-owned real estate.”
In view of the throttling of Russian gas supplies, everything must be done to keep gas power generation as low as possible, said Baldauf. “These include temporarily longer operating times for nuclear power plants.”
He said it was “completely incomprehensible that in the last two months we had the highest level of gas generation in Germany, that we also export electricity to France, and then additionally burden the private households that have been hit in this way with a gas levy.” This will mean that six out of ten private households will no longer be able to save. “This is a social imbalance that we must not accept and that we must counteract in a targeted manner.”
Baldauf promoted his proposal for a basic supply of gas at a fixed price, with only the additionally consumed quantity being sold at market prices. “The same system could also be used for gas and electricity supply to industry.” In this way, state regulation and the market economy could be meaningfully linked.
