Situation der deutschen Energieversorgung

The focus is on 4 energy supply issues of decisive relevance to energy supply in Germany, but also in other countries in Europe and worldwide: (1) How will the global energy situation develop? (2) What is the organization, and the development, of the market in which we are doing business? (3) What are the challenges facing the power industry in view of a threatening climate change? (4) Against this backdrop, how do we design the energy mix of the future? Analysis of these 4 points shows that, for a foreseeable time, all types of energy generation are necessary if Germany and Europe are to be supplied energy efficiently, securely, and in a way not polluting the environment. Hence, these concrete conclusions can be drawn: (1) We need more renewable energies in Germany, in Europe, and worldwide. (2) We need the development of 700 °C coal-fired power plant technology in order to first advance the development of CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology and thus minimize CO 2 emissions from fossil-fired power plants. (3) We need increases in energy efficiency which help us satisfy the steadily growing need for energy with dwindling fossil resources. (4) We need nuclear power because of its ability to produce baseload electricity free from CO 2 . For nuclear power, it is now important that politics and the power industry jointly find ways and means to reassess, in an unbiased way, the plant operating lives laid down in the current Atomic Energy Act. This is required, inter alia, because of the challenges in climate policy and because of global economic boundary conditions.