CLIMATE SPECTATOR: A grand play for German power

Climate Spectator

It seems strange that the world's most cautious and best performing economy should be acting as some sort of crash test dummy for the world's clean energy future. But this is exactly the position that Germany finds itself in following its commitment earlier this year to abandon nuclear energy and to push towards its vision of a fully renewable power supply by 2050.

And if this is the future, then companies that have based their models around the principal of centralised power stations may find little cause for comfort. But it is presenting enormous opportunities for those focused on the concept of distributed generation, particularly fuel cells – at least that's the take of Roman Dudenhausen, the chief executive and co-founder of German energy consultants ConEnergy, and a recently appointed director to the board of Australia's Ceramic Fuels Cells.

Dudenhausen says the accelerated phase-out of Germany's nuclear capacity is presenting companies such as Ceramic with a unique opportunity. Energy experts had presumed that offshore wind and gas would fill the nuclear gap, but the cost of offshore wind is proving much higher than expected, not least because Germans don't want to see giant turbines off their coastline, forcing their sighting 50km or more offshore. And that power is most needed in southern Germany, adding to transmission costs. "We will see some wind parks, but not as many as predicted,” Dudenhausen says.

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