Energy transition: The experts say so, the Court of Auditors says so

Highlights: The Federal Audit Office finds that the energy transition is not working properly and that the supply is “at risk” The actual specialist authorities see things differently and recognize successes. The report published last week has a different tone than the previous one: “Germany is pursuing very ambitious goals. However, this is not on track, it is lagging behind its goals” It says security of supply is at risk, the electricity is expensive, and this poses “significant risks for Germany as a business location”

The Federal Audit Office finds that the energy transition is not working properly and that the supply is “at risk”. The actual specialist authorities see things differently and recognize successes. Could this be due to the staff?

Enlarge image

Kay Scheller (President Federal Audit Office), Klaus Müller (President Federal Network Agency), Dirk Messner (President UBA)

Photo:

[M] M. Popow / Metodi Popow / IMAGO;

Rolf Vennenbernd / picture alliance / dpa;

Reiner Zensen / IMAGO

There are two federal authorities that are important for the transition to a CO₂-neutral energy system: the Federal Network Agency and the Federal Environment Agency.

The former is responsible, among other things, for networks and security of supply, the second for, among other things, the question of whether Germany can meet its climate targets.

There is another authority, which according to the relevant law is an “independent financial control body”, i.e. actually responsible for money: the Federal Audit Office (BRH).

According to Section 99 of the Federal Budget Code, he may also inform the Bundestag and the Bundestag “at any time” about “matters of particular importance”.

In the past, the Court of Auditors generally limited these special reports to things that had to do with money, taxes, and so on.

This has changed since Kay Scheller (CDU) became president in 2014: three of the 16 “special reports” published since he took office concern the energy transition, and another concerns the “management of climate protection” in Germany.

You could say: Under Kay Scheller, the BRH has developed a certain fascination for climate and energy.

Political fighting term in the report

In some of these reports the Court went surprisingly far in making policy proposals.

A quote from 2018: “In addition, general CO

pricing could be considered as a non-‘planned economy’ instrument.” The fact that a federal authority is taking up the political battle term “planned economy” in an official document is surprising.

To be fair, it has to be said that the BRH criticized the economics and energy ministries in all of its reports for being too slow in expanding renewables.

However, the report published last week has a different tone than the previous one: “Germany is pursuing very ambitious goals for the energy transition.

However, this is not on track, it is lagging behind its goals." The security of supply is at risk, the electricity is expensive, and this poses "significant risks for Germany as a business location."

The report once again rightly points out that the network expansion is far behind plan - but until you find out that this is mainly due to the expansion debts of the Merkel years 2015 to 2021, you have to turn to page 23.

There is a plan (not a “planned economy”) for expansion, which the Merkel III and IV cabinets unfortunately did not adhere to.

Lobby organization INSM quoted

In the BRH energy transition report from 2018, the word “grid expansion” only appeared once, without any criticism of the delays.

The 2021 report talks a lot about network expansion, especially about the measures the government planned in this area - and about the costs (the correct term would be "investment").

On this point, the BRH surprisingly referred to a report commissioned by the industrial lobby organization Initiative New Social Market Economy (INSM) instead of presenting its own figures.

Even back then, the text said: “The progress of network expansion (…) has so far lagged significantly behind plans.”

In addition to security of supply and affordability, the 2024 report also contains the word “environmental compatibility” in the title for the first time.

The corresponding section does not deal with the climate crisis, but rather with topics such as “negative environmental effects of the energy transition”.

The BRH sees renewable energies not least as an inadequately managed environmental

problem

Strangely tendentious, facts omitted

Overall, the federal government's measures for the energy transition are "inadequate" and pose "serious risks," according to the BRH.

Strangely, these words are not found in the 2021 and 2018 reports, even though the expansion of renewable energies was much slower then than it is now.

The tone of the latest report is much more aggressive, and it is strangely tendentious.

An example: The report contains the information that 14.1 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity was added in 2023 - but not the information that this was 5.1 gigawatts more than planned.

Instead, the BRH claims that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has determined "that the expansion dynamic is far from sufficient to move towards the statutory expansion path (target path) of the EEG 2023 for wind energy and solar systems."

This is correct for wind energy, but incorrect for solar power.

The report completely ignores other facts.

For example, photovoltaics are now increasingly being coupled with local storage systems, meaning solar power is also available at night.

»Sharp language and gaps in the argument«

There was correspondingly a lot of criticism of the BRH report: it was “excessive,” according to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung.”

The federal energy supplier association BDEW - the industry responsible for electricity supply - explained that the BRH "overshoots the mark with its general criticism."

Energy market experts such as Claudia Kemfert from the German Institute for Economic Research and Christoph Maurer from the University of Erlangen joined in the criticism.

In an interview with Wirtschaftswoche, the latter diagnosed that the report was "a fairly redundant listing and summing up of known facts, presented in very sharp language and with numerous gaps in the argument."

The Federal Environment Agency also came to a different conclusion than Kay Scheller's authority this week.

»Looking ahead to 2030, I am confident that we can meet the national climate goals.

We have already made a lot of progress in climate protection," explained UBA President Dirk Messner.

In the energy industry, CO₂ emissions fell by 20.1 percent from 2022 to 2023.

This also has to do with reduced demand - but also with the accelerated expansion of renewable energies.

The share of renewables in the load is now over 60 percent – in the middle of winter.

The Federal Network Agency also sees it completely differently

The other actually responsible authority also came to a completely different conclusion than the non-expert BRH: "This report shows that in the selected scenarios, the secure supply of electricity is guaranteed in the period 2025 to 2031," said the Federal Network Agency in its most recent publication on the subject .

There was also criticism of this report - but not from experts, but from Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU), who is very interested in Russian gas.

When it comes to such topics, you shouldn't primarily look at personal details, but rather at the actual situation.

But in this specific case, the differences between the assessments of the specialist authorities are remarkable - and also those between the executives involved.

Who comes from where?

Klaus Müller, head of the Federal Network Agency, is a Green.

Before taking up this position in 2022, he served as board member of the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations for eight years - so the well-being of (electricity) consumers is presumably important to him.

Dirk Messner became President of the Federal Environment Agency in 2019, under the so-called grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD.

Nothing is known about his party affiliation, but in his capacity as an expert in international environmental policy, Messner occasionally writes texts for the Green Party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Messner is not a politician, but a scientist.

From 2004 to 2019 he sat on the Federal Government's Scientific Advisory Board for Global Environmental Change (WBGU).

In 2013, under a black-yellow government, he became its chairman.

It doesn't get much more non-partisan than that.

Christian Stöcker

Men who burn the world

Publisher: Ullstein

Number of pages: 336

Publisher: Ullstein

Number of pages: 336

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The CDU man in the Federal Audit Office

The President of the Federal Audit Office, Kay Scheller, on the other hand, was parliamentary group director (not chairman) of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2005 to 2014.

So also in the phase from 2011 in which Philip Rösler (FDP), Norbert Röttgen (CDU) and most recently Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) strangled the expansion of renewable energies and delayed grid expansion.

The later Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU), who was similarly unsuccessful when it came to the energy transition, publicly rejoiced in 2012 at the success in destroying the domestic industry: "This shows that our common law is starting to take effect," he said in 2012, commenting on the slump in the expansion of photovoltaic systems.

This had very tangible consequences that we still suffer from today.

For example on the labor market: In the solar industry, for example, over 156,000 people worked in Germany in 2011.

Ten years later, in 2021, there were almost 100,000 fewer.

37,000 jobs were lost in the wind energy industry between 2016 and 2021.

Like Altmaier, CDU man Kay Scheller is one of the people who bear responsibility for the misguided energy policy of the Merkel era.

Now his authority is surprisingly criticizing the current federal government: things are not moving fast enough, security of supply is at risk, and there are too few alternatives to renewables.

This is strikingly similar to the party line of the Union, which gratefully received the BRH report.

The Gazprom lobbyist from the ministry

There is another connection between Kay Scheller and energy policy: His wife Marion Scheller worked as head of the ministry's energy policy department until 2016, under Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

From this position, as the "Nordkurier" pointed out this week, she moved seamlessly to another: that of German chief lobbyist for the Russian energy company Gazprom, until 2019. At the time, even the "world" that was more favorable to fossil fuels found the smooth transition worthy of criticism .

In her capacity as a Gazprom lobbyist, Marion Scheller also had to do with Manuela Schwesig (SPD) - both of whom were of course very much in favor of Nord Stream II.

It will probably take a while until the Merkel era's entanglements with Russia's fossil fuel industry are fully resolved.

And also until the huge failures of these governments in the energy transition and grid expansion are compensated for.

And it seems as if the battle for sovereignty of interpretation in this area is not over - and is now also ongoing through official reports.