According to a new survey, many managers see skepticism among parts of the German population as an obstacle to the energy transition. From the perspective of the companies surveyed, the biggest priority in restructuring the energy supply this year should be the expansion of energy storage, followed by grid connection and the exit from fossil fuels. The Munich-based Baywa r.e. announced this on Wednesday. with, a large project developer of green electricity power plants. In December, the company surveyed 2,500 managers from five economic sectors in Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain and Spain – 500 in each country and half from medium-sized companies and half from large companies.
28 percent of managers working in Germany cited a lack of support from the population as the biggest hurdle to the energy transition, 27 percent complained about supply chain problems and 26 percent cited a lack of availability of renewable energy. When it came to the most urgent tasks, 22 percent cited expanding energy storage capacity, and 21 percent each cited connecting to the grid or saying goodbye to fossil fuels.
According to the survey, German managers are also more concerned about a negative attitude from the population than their colleagues in the four other nations: internationally, the lack of availability of green energy topped the list of concerns, followed by bureaucratic hurdles.
The construction of large energy storage facilities, which was discussed in the survey, has become an issue because of the imbalance in the German electricity supply: Since much more electricity is now consumed in southern Germany than is produced, the financial and technical effort to stabilize the power grids has increased: in 2022 the so-called ” According to the Federal Network Agency, “congestion management” amounts to over four billion euros.
Large batteries are intended to store excess green electricity and act as short-term buffers to compensate for network overloads. According to supporters, this would save billions in costs and reduce the need for electricity generation in gas power plants, which have so far compensated for bottlenecks in the network, especially in the south.
“We need battery storage in order to be able to fully exploit the potential of renewable energy sources,” said Julian Gerstner, head of the storage business at BayWa r.e. In December, the federal government presented the key points of a “storage strategy”. also active in the energy trading and storage business and therefore has a vested interest in the energy transition.
