Peer-to-peer energy breakthrough could allow solar and wind energy sources to be shared

France EV Incentive Rules prioritize EU-made electric vehicles, tying subsidies to manufacturing emissions and carbon footprint, making Stellantis, Renault, and Tesla Model Y eligible while excluding many China-built models under a new eligibility list.

Key Points

Links EV subsidies to manufacturing emissions, favoring EU-made models and restricting many China-built cars.

✅ Subsidies tied to lifecycle manufacturing emissions.

✅ EU production favored; many China-built EVs excluded.

✅ Eligible: Stellantis, Renault, Tesla Model Y; not Model 3.

France's revamped new EV rules on consumer cash incentives for electric car purchases favour vehicles made in France and Europe over models manufactured in China, a government list of eligible car types published recently has showed.

Some 65% of electric cars sold in France will be eligible for the scheme, which from Friday will include new criteria covering the amount of carbon emitted in the manufacturing of an electric vehicle (EV).

The list of eligible models includes 24 produced by Franco-Italian group Stellantis (STLAM.MI) and five by French carmaker Renault (RENA.PA). Elon Musk's Tesla (TSLA.O) Model Y will be eligible but not its Model 3.

Electric vehicle brand MG Motors, owned by China's SAIC, said it expects the new rules to weigh on the French EV market, despite the global surge in EV sales seen in recent years.

"There are cars that will entirely lose their competitiveness", an MG spokesperson told Reuters, adding that the brand had decided not to apply for the bonus scheme for its MG4 model because it was "designed to exclude us".

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire hailed what he called the new rules' incentive for automakers to reduce their carbon footprint.

"We will no longer be subsidising car production that emits too much CO2," he said in a statement.

President Emmanuel Macron's government has wanted to make French and European-made EVs more affordable for domestic consumers relative to cheaper vehicles produced in China, amid a record EV market share in the country.

The average retail price of an EV in Europe, even as the EU EV share grew during lockdown months, was more than 65,000 euros ($71,000) in the first half of 2023, compared with just over 31,000 euros in China, according to research by Jato Dynamics.

The French government already offered buyers a cash incentive of between 5,000 and 7,000 euros to get more electric cars on the road, at a total cost of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) per year.

However, in the absence of cheap European-made EVs, a third of all incentives are going to consumers buying EVs made in China, French finance ministry officials say. The trend has helped spur a surge in imports and a growing competitive gap with domestic producers.

China's auto industry relies heavily on coal-generated electricity, meaning many Chinese-made EVs will henceforth not qualify.

The Ademe agency overseeing the process studied the eligibility of almost 500 EV models and their variants to include in the scheme.

Dacia, the low-cost Renault brand, saw its Spring model imported from China excluded from the list.

Tesla's Model 3 is made in China. The Model Y, which is larger and more expensive, is made mainly in Berlin and was the top selling EV in France over the first 11 months of the year, amid forecasts that EVs could dominate within a decade in many markets.

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US Renewable Energy Transition is the shift from fossil fuels to wind, solar, and nuclear, targeting net-zero emissions via grid modernization, battery storage, and new transmission to replace legacy plants and meet rising electrification.

Key Points

The move to decarbonize electricity by scaling wind, solar, and nuclear with storage and transmission upgrades.

✅ Falling LCOE makes wind and solar competitive with gas and coal.

✅ 4-hour lithium-ion storage shifts solar to evening peak demand.

✅ New high-voltage transmission links resource-rich regions to load.

Generating electricity to power homes and businesses is a significant contributor to climate change. In the United States, one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity production, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Solar panels and wind farms can generate electricity without releasing any greenhouse gas emissions, and recent research suggests wind and solar could meet about 80% of U.S. demand with supportive infrastructure. Nuclear power plants can too, although today’s plants generate long-lasting radioactive waste, which has no permanent storage repository.

But the U.S. electrical sector is still dependent on fossil fuels. In 2021, 61 percent of electricity generation came from burning coal, natural gas, or petroleum. Only 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S. came from renewables, mostly wind energy, hydropower and solar energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and in 2022 renewable electricity surpassed coal nationwide as portfolios shifted. Another 19 percent came from nuclear power.

The contribution from renewables has been increasing steadily since the 1990s, and the rate of increase has accelerated, with renewables projected to reach one-fourth of U.S. generation in the near term. For example, wind power provided only 2.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 1990, doubling to 5.6 billion in 2000. But from there, it skyrocketed, growing to 94.6 billion in 2010 and 379.8 billion in 2021.

That’s progress, as the U.S. moves toward 30% electricity from wind and solar this decade, but it’s not happening fast enough to eliminate the worst effects of climate change for our descendants.

“We need to eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050,” philanthropist and technologist Bill Gates wrote in his 2023 annual letter. “Extreme weather is already causing more suffering, and if we don’t get to net-zero emissions, our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off.”

And the problem is actually bigger than it looks, even as pathways to zero-emissions electricity by 2035 are being developed.

“We need not just to create as much electricity as we have now, but three times as much,” says Saul Griffith, an entrepreneur who’s sold companies to Google and Autodesk and has written books on mass electrification. To get to zero emissions, all the cars and heating systems and stoves will have to be powered with electricity, said Griffith. Electricity is not necessarily clean, but at least it it can be, unlike gas-powered stoves or gasoline-powered cars.

The technology to generate electricity with wind and solar has existed for decades. So why isn’t the electric grid already 100% powered by renewables? And what will it take to get there?

First of all, renewables have only recently become cost-competitive with fossil fuels for generating electricity. Even then, prices depend on the location, Paul Denholm of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory told CNBC.

In California and Arizona, where there is a lot of sun, solar energy is often the cheapest option, whereas in places like Maine, solar is just on the edge of being the cheapest energy source, Denholm said. In places with lots of wind like North Dakota, wind power is cost-competitive with fossil fuels, but in the Southeast, it’s still a close call.

Then there’s the cost of transitioning the current power generation infrastructure, which was built around burning fossil fuels, and policymakers are weighing ways to meet U.S. decarbonization goals as they plan grid investments.

“You’ve got an existing power plant, it’s paid off. Now you need renewables to be cheaper than running that plant to actually retire an old plant,” Denholm explained. “You need new renewables to be cheaper just in the variable costs, or the operating cost of that power plant.”

There are some places where that is true, but it’s not universally so.

“Primarily, it just takes a long time to turn over the capital stock of a multitrillion-dollar industry,” Denholm said. “We just have a huge amount of legacy equipment out there. And it just takes awhile for that all to be turned over.”

Intermittency and transmission
One of the biggest barriers to a 100% renewable grid is the intermittency of many renewable power sources, the dirty secret of clean energy that planners must manage. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine — and the windiest and sunniest places are not close to all the country’s major population centers.

Wind resources in the United States, according to the the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Wind resources in the United States, according to the the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
The solution is a combination of batteries to store excess power for times when generation is low, and transmission lines to take the power where it is needed.

Long-duration batteries are under development, but Denholm said a lot of progress can be made simply with utility-scale batteries that store energy for a few hours.

“One of the biggest problems right now is shifting a little bit of solar energy, for instance, from say, 11 a.m. and noon to the peak demand at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. So you really only need a few hours of batteries,” Denholm told CNBC. “You can actually meet that with conventional lithium ion batteries. This is very close to the type of batteries that are being put in cars today. You can go really far with that.”

So far, battery usage has been low because wind and solar are primarily used to buffer the grid when energy sources are low, rather than as a primary source. For the first 20% to 40% of the electricity in a region to come from wind and solar, battery storage is not needed, Denholm said. When renewable penetration starts reaching closer to 50%, then battery storage becomes necessary. And building and deploying all those batteries will take time and money.
 

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Volvo Electric Heavy-Duty Trucks lead Europe’s e-mobility shift, meeting strict emissions rules with battery-electric drivelines, hydrogen fuel cell roadmaps, fast charging infrastructure, and autonomous freight solutions for regional haulage and urban construction.

Key Points

A battery-electric heavy truck range for haulage and urban construction, targeting zero emissions and compliance.

✅ Up to 44t GCW, ranges up to 300 km per charge

✅ Battery-electric now; hydrogen fuel cells targeted next

✅ Production from 2022; suited to haulage and construction

According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global electric truck market generated $422.5M (approx €355.1M) in 2019 and is estimated to reach $1.89B (approx €1.58B) by 2027, registering a CAGR of 25.8% from 2020 to 2027, reflecting broader expectations that EV adoption within a decade will accelerate worldwide. 

The surge in government initiatives to promote e-mobility and stringent emission norms on vehicles using fossil fuels (petrol and diesel) is driving the growth of the global electric truck market, while shifts in the EV aftermarket are expected to reinforce this trend. 

Launching a range of electric trucks in 2021
Volvo is among the several companies, including early moves like Tesla's truck reveal efforts, trying to cash in on this popular and lucrative market. Recently, the company announced that it’s going to launch a complete heavy-duty range of trucks with electric drivelines starting in Europe in 2021. Next year, hauliers in Europe will be able to order all-electric versions of Volvo’s heavy-duty trucks. The sales will begin next year and volume production will start in 2022. 

“To reduce the impact of transport on the climate, we need to make a swift transition from fossil fuels to alternatives such as electricity. But the conditions for making this shift, and consequently the pace of the transition, vary dramatically across different hauliers and markets, depending on many variables such as financial incentives, access to charging infrastructure and type of transport operations,” explains Roger Alm, President Volvo Trucks.

Used for regional transport and urban construction operations
According to the company, it is now testing electric heavy-duty models – Volvo FH, FM, and FMX trucks, which will be used for regional transport and urban construction operations in Europe, and in the U.S., 70 Volvo VNR Electric trucks are being deployed in California initiatives as well. These Volvo trucks will offer a complete heavy-duty range with electric drivelines. These trucks will have a gross combination weight of up to 44 tonnes.

“Our chassis is designed to be independent of the driveline used. Our customers can choose to buy several Volvo trucks of the same model, with the only difference being that some are electric and others are powered by gas or diesel. As regards product characteristics, such as the driver’s environment, reliability, and safety, all our vehicles meet the same high standards. Drivers should feel familiar with their vehicles and be able to operate them safely and efficiently regardless of the fuel used,” says Alm.

Fossil free by 2040
Depending on the battery configuration the range could be up to 300 km, claims the company. Back in 2019, Volvo started manufacturing the Volvo FL Electric and FE Electric for city distribution and refuse operations, primarily in Europe, while in the van segment, Ford's all-electric Transit targets similar urban use cases. Volvo Trucks aims to start selling electric trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells in the second half of this decade. Volvo Trucks’ objective is for its entire product range to be fossil-free by 2040.

Back in 2019, Swedish autonomous and electric freight mobility leader provider Einride’s Pod became the world’s first autonomous, all-electric truck to operate a commercial flow for DB Schenker with a permit on the public road. Last month, the company launched its next-generation Pod in the hopes to have it on the road starting from 2021, while major fleet commitments such as UPS's Tesla Semi pre-orders signal broader demand.

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EV charging anxiety reflects concerns beyond range anxiety, focusing on charging infrastructure, fast chargers, and network reliability during road trips, from Tesla Superchargers to Electrify America stations across highways in the United States.

Key Points

EV charging anxiety is worry about finding reliable fast chargers on public networks, not just limited range.

✅ Non-Tesla networks vary in uptime and plug-and-charge reliability.

✅ Charging deserts complicate route planning on long highway stretches.

✅ Sync stops: align rest breaks with fast chargers to save time.

With electric cars, people often talk about "range anxiety," and how cars with bigger batteries and longer driving ranges will alleviate that. I just drove an electric car from New York City to Atlanta, a distance of about 950 miles, and it taught me something important. The problem really isn't range anxiety. It's anxiety around finding a convenient and working chargers on America's still-challenged EV charging networks today.

Back in 2019, I drove a Tesla Model S Long Range from New York City to Atlanta. It was a mostly uneventful trip, thanks to Tesla's nicely organized and well maintained network of fast chargers that can fill the batteries with an 80% charge in a half hour or less. Since then, I've wanted to try that trip again with an electric car that wasn't a Tesla, one that wouldn't have Tesla's unified charging network to rely on.
I got my chance with a Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+, a car that is as close to a direct competitor to the Tesla Model S as any. And while I made it to Atlanta without major incident, I encountered glitchy chargers, called the charging network's customer service twice, and experienced some serious charging anxiety during a long stretch of the Carolinas.

Long range
The EPA estimated range for the Tesla I drove in 2019 was 370 miles, and Tesla's latest models can go even further.

The EQS 450+ is officially estimated to go 350 miles on a charge, but I beat that handily without even trying. When I got into the car, its internal displays showed a range estimate of 446 miles. On my trip, the car couldn't stretch its legs quite that far, because I was driving almost entirely on highways at fairly high speeds, but by my calculations, I could have gone between 370 and 390 miles on a charge.

I was going to drive over the George Washington Bridge then down through New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia then North Carolina and South Carolina. I figured three charging stops would be needed and, strictly speaking, that was correct. The driving route laid out by the car's navigation system included three charging stops, but the on-board computers tended push things to the limit. At each stop, the battery would be drained to a little over 10% or so. (I learned later this is a setting I could adjust to be more conservative if I'd wanted.)

But I've driven enough electric cars to have some concerns. I use public chargers fairly often, and I know they're imperfect, and we need to fix these problems to build confidence. Sometimes they aren't working as well as they should. Sometimes they're just plain broken. And even if the car's navigation system is telling you that a charger is "available," that can change at any moment. Someone else can pull into the charging spot just a few seconds before you get there.
I've learned to be flexible and not push things to the limit.

On the first day, when I planned to drive from New York to Richmond, Virginia, no charging stop was called for until Spotsylvania, Virginia, a distance of nearly 300 miles. By that point, I had 16% charge left in the car's batteries which, by the car's own calculation, would have taken me another 60 miles.

As I sat and worked inside the Spotsylvania Town Centre mall I realized I'd been dumb. I had already stopped twice, at rest stops in New Jersey and Delaware. The Delaware stop, at the Biden Welcome Center, had EV fast chargers, as the American EV boom accelerates nationwide. I could have used one even though the car's navigation didn't suggest it.

Stopping without charging was a lost opportunity and it cost me time. If I'm going to stop to recharge myself why not recharge the car, too?
But that's the thing, though. A car can be designed to go 350 miles or more before needing to park whereas human beings are not. Elementary school math will tell you that at highway speeds, that's nearly six hours of driving all at once. We need bathrooms, beverages, food, and to just get out and move around once in a while. Sure, it's physically possible to sit in a car for longer than that in one go, but most people in need of speed will take an airplane, and a driver of an EQS, with a starting price just north of $100,000, can almost certainly afford the ticket.

I stopped for a charge in Virginia but realized I could have stopped sooner. I encountered a lot of other electric cars on the trip, including this Hyundai Ioniq 5 charging next to the Mercedes.

I vowed not to make that strategic error again. I was going to take back control. On the second day, I decided, I would choose when I needed to stop, and would look for conveniently located fast chargers so both the EQS and I could get refreshed at once. The EQS's navigation screen pinpointed available charging locations and their maximum charging speeds, so, if I saw an available charger, I could poke on the icon with my finger and add it onto my route.

For my first stop after leaving Richmond, I pulled into a rest stop in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It was only about 160 miles south from my hotel and I still had half of a full charge.

I sipped coffee and answered some emails while I waited at a counter. I figured I would take as long as I wanted and leave when I was ready with whatever additional electricity the car had gained in that time. In all, I was there about 45 minutes, but at least 15 minutes of that was used trying to get the charger to work. One of the chargers was simply not working at all, and, at another one, a call to Electrify America customer service -- the EV charging company owned by Volkswagen that, by coincidence, operated all the chargers I used on the trip -- I got a successful charging session going at last. (It was unclear what the issue was.)

That was the last and only time I successfully matched my own need to stop with the car's. I left with my battery 91% charged and 358 miles of range showing on the display. I would only need to stop once more on way to Atlanta and not for a long time.

Charging deserts
Then I began to notice something. As I drove through North Carolina and then South Carolina, the little markers on the map screen indicating available chargers became fewer and fewer. During some fairly long stretches there were none showing at all, highlighting how better grid coordination could improve coverage.

It wasn't an immediate concern, though. The EQS's navigation wasn't calling for me to a charge up again until I'd nearly reached the Georgia border. By that point I would have about 11% of my battery charge remaining. But I was getting nervous. Given how far it was between chargers my whole plan of "recharging the car when I recharge myself" had already fallen apart, the much-touted electric-car revolution notwithstanding. I had to leave the highway once to find a gas station to use the restroom and buy an iced tea. A while later, I stopped for lunch, a big plate of "Lexington Style BBQ" with black eyed peas and collard greens in Lexington, North Carolina. None of that involved charging because there no chargers around.

Fortunately, a charger came into sight on my map while I still had 31% charge remaining. I decided I would protect myself by stopping early. After another call to Electrify America customer service, I was able to get a nice, high-powered charging session on the second charger I tried. After about an hour I was off again with a nearly full battery.

I drove the last 150 miles to Atlanta, crossing the state line through gorgeous wetlands and stopping at the Georgia Welcome Center, with hardly a thought about batteries or charging or range.

But I was driving $105,000 Mercedes. What if I'd been driving something that cost less and that, while still going farther than a human would want to drive at a stretch, wouldn't go far enough to make that trip as easily, a real concern for those deciding if it's time to buy an electric car today. Obviously, people do it. One thing that surprised me on this trip, compared to the one in 2019, was the variety of fully electric vehicles I saw driving the same highways. There were Chevrolet Bolts, Audi E-Trons, Porsche Taycans, Hyundai Ioniqs, Kia EV6s and at least one other Mercedes EQS.

Americans are taking their electric cars out onto the highways, as the age of electric cars gathers pace nationwide. But it's still not as easy as it ought to be.

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EVI-Pro Lite EV Load Forecasting helps utilities model EV charging infrastructure, grid load shapes, and resilient energy systems, factoring home, workplace, and public charging behavior to inform planning, capacity upgrades, and flexible demand strategies.

Key Points

A NREL tool projecting EV charging demand and load shapes to help utilities plan the grid and right-size infrastructure.

✅ Visualizes weekday/weekend EV load by charger type.

✅ Tests home, workplace, and public charging access scenarios.

✅ Supports utility planning, demand flexibility, and capacity upgrades.

As electric vehicles (EVs) continue to grow in popularity, utilities and community planners are increasingly focused on building resilient energy systems that can support the added electric load from EV charging, including a possible EV-driven demand increase across the grid.

But forecasting the best ways to adapt to increased EV charging can be a difficult task as EV adoption will challenge state power grids in diverse ways. Planners need to consider when consumers charge, how fast they charge, and where they charge, among other factors.

To support that effort, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have expanded the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Projection (EVI-Pro) Lite tool with more analytic capabilities. EVI-Pro Lite is a simplified version of EVI-Pro, the more complex, original version of the tool developed by NREL and the California Energy Commission to inform detailed infrastructure requirements to support a growing EV fleet in California, where EVs bolster grid stability through coordinated planning.

EVI-Pro Lite’s estimated weekday electric load by charger type for El Paso, Texas, assuming a fleet of 10,000 plug-in electric vehicles, an average of 35 daily miles traveled, and 50% access to home charging, among other variables, as well as potential roles for vehicle-to-grid power in future scenarios. The order of the legend items matches the order of the series stacked in the chart.

Previously, the tool was limited to letting users estimate how many chargers and what kind of chargers a city, region, or state may need to support an influx of EVs. In the added online application, those same users can take it a step further to predict how that added EV charging will impact electricity demand, or load shapes, in their area at any given time and inform grid coordination for EV flexibility strategies.

“EV charging is going to look different across the country, depending on the prevalence of EVs, access to home charging, and the kind of chargers most used,” said Eric Wood, an NREL researcher who led model development. “Our expansion gives stakeholders—especially small- to medium-size electric utilities and co-ops—an easy way to analyze key factors for developing a flexible energy strategy that can respond to what’s happening on the ground.”

Tools to forecast EV loads have existed for some time, but Wood said that EVI-Pro Lite appeals to a wider audience, including planners tracking EVs' impact on utilities in many markets. The tool is a user-friendly, free online application that displays a clear graphic of daily projected electric loads from EV charging for regions across the country.

After selecting a U.S. metropolitan area and entering the number of EVs in the light-duty fleet, users can change a range of variables to see how they affect electricity demand on a typical weekday or weekend. Reducing access to home charging by half, for example, results in higher electric loads earlier in the day, although energy storage and mobile charging can help moderate peaks in some cases. That is because under such a scenario, EV owners might rely more on public or workplace charging instead of plugging in at home later in the evening or at night.

“Our goal with the lite version of EVI-Pro is to make estimating loads across thousands of scenarios fast and intuitive,” Wood said. “And if utilities or stakeholders want to take that analysis even deeper, our team at NREL can fill that gap through partnership agreements, too. The full version of EVI-Pro can be tailored to develop detailed studies for individual planners, agencies, or utilities.”

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German Wind Power 2030 Outlook highlights onshore and offshore growth, repowering, higher full-load hours, and efficiency gains. Deutsche WindGuard, BWE, and LEE NRW project 200+ TWh, potentially 500 TWh, covering rising electricity demand.

Key Points

Forecast: efficiency and full-load gains could double onshore wind to 200+ TWh; added land could lift output to 500 TWh.

✅ Modern turbines and repowering boost full-load hours and yields

✅ Onshore generation could hit 200+ TWh on existing areas by 2030

✅ Expanding land to 2% may enable 500 TWh; offshore adds more

Wind turbines have become more and more efficient over the past two decades, a trend reflected in Denmark's new green record for wind-powered generation.

A new study by Deutsche WindGuard calculates the effect on the actual generation volumes for the first time, underscoring Germany's energy transition balancing act as targets scale. Conclusion of the analysis: The technical progress enables a doubling of the wind power generation by 2030.

Progressive technological developments make wind turbines more powerful and also enable more and more full-load hours, with wind leading the power mix in many markets today. This means that more electricity can be generated continuously than previously assumed. This is shown by a new study by Deutsche WindGuard, which was commissioned by the Federal Wind Energy Association (BWE) and the State Association of Renewable Energies NRW (LEE NRW).

The study 'Full load hours of wind turbines on land - development, influences, effects' describes in detail for the first time the effects of advances in wind energy technology on the actual generation volumes. It can thus serve as the basis for further calculations and potential assessments, reflecting milestones like UK wind surpassing coal in 2016 in broader analyses.

The results of the investigation show that the use of modern wind turbines with higher full load hours alone on the previously designated areas could double wind power generation to over 200 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2030. With an additional area designation, generation could even be increased to 500 TWh. If the electricity from offshore wind energy is added, the entire German electricity consumption from wind energy could theoretically be covered, and renewables recently outdelivered coal and nuclear in Germany as a sign of momentum: The current electricity consumption in Germany is currently a good 530 TWh, but will increase in the future.

Christian Mildenberger, Managing Director of LEE NRW: 'Wind can do much more: In the past 20 years, technology has made great leaps and bounds. Modern wind turbines produce around ten times as much electricity today as those built at the turn of the millennium. This must also be better reflected in potential studies by the federal and state governments. '

Wolfram Axthelm, BWE Managing Director: 'We need a new look at the existing areas and the repowering. Today in Germany not even one percent of the area is designated for wind energy inland. But even with this we could cover almost 40 percent of the electricity demand by 2030. If this area share were increased to only 2 percent of the federal area, it would be almost 100 percent of the electricity demand! Wind energy is indispensable for a CO2-neutral future. This requires a clever provision of space in all federal states. '

Dr. Dennis Kruse, Managing Director of Deutsche WindGuard: 'It turns out that the potential of onshore wind energy in Germany is still significantly underestimated. Modern wind turbines achieve a significantly higher number of full load hours than previously assumed. That means: The wind can be used more and more efficiently and deliver more income. '

On the areas already designated today, numerous older systems will be replaced by modern ones by 2030 (repowering). However, many old systems will still be in operation. According to Windguard's calculations, the remaining existing systems, together with around 12,500 new, modern wind systems, could generate 212 TWh in 2030. If the area backdrop were expanded from 0.9 percent today to 2 percent of the land area, around 500 TWh would be generated by inland wind, despite grid expansion challenges in Europe that shape deployment.

The ongoing technological development must also be taken into account. The manufacturers of wind turbines are currently working on a new class of turbines with an output of over seven megawatts that will be available in three to five years. According to calculations by the LEE NRW, by 2040 the same number of wind turbines as today could produce over 700 TWh of electricity inland. The electricity demand, which will increase in the future due to electromobility, heat pumps and the production of green hydrogen, can thus be completely covered by a combination of onshore wind, offshore wind, solar power, bioenergy, hydropower and geothermal energy, and a net-zero roadmap for Germany points to significant cost reductions.

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