Social and economic developments

Climate change has become an increasing area of focus, with social movements such as the ‘Fridays for Future’ campaign pressuring policymakers into addressing the issue in their decision-making. Their concerns are reinforced by the increasing number and impact of environmental disasters, including the

A reliable grid infrastructure is essential for strong industry. However, sector coupling is becoming just as important. We see this already happening in the automotive industry, which is one of Germany’s biggest industries. Our interactions with the electricity grid will change and will become more intense and complex. Therefore, it is important that we can count on reliable system operators to support industry in their management of energy, delivering green electricity whenever and wherever it is needed, whilst focusing on affordability at the same time. floods in Belgium and Germany and the forest fires in the Mediterranean region that took place during the summer of 2021. This has led political leaders to call for the decarbonisation and electrification of society, in turn making onshore and offshore grid expansion indispensable.

As we work towards these goals, the needs of two of our stakeholders - industry and smaller end consumers - must be kept in mind.

On the one hand, industrial players are striving to quickly decarbonise, in line with the European Green Deal. This includes the chemical, steel, automotive and oil and gas sectors. As these large customers are directly connected to our transmission grid, we play an important role in linking them to RES, enabling innovative processes to be adopted and encouraging sector coupling (and so advancing the production of green steel or gas). In order to support such players and find quick and easy solutions to their decarbonisation needs, we are committed to undertaking real stakeholder dialogue, for example through the organisation of industry roundtables.

On the other hand, households and smaller consumers are slowly transforming into prosumers who want to play an active role in energy markets by producing their own energy (through their home solar panels) and injecting it back into the grid. These, and the owners of flexible appliances such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, will become important providers of flexibility for the grid: they will be able to charge their appliances when there are high amounts of renewable energy available and will be able to inject electricity back into the grid when it needs it. Moreover, consumers are increasingly expecting to interact with the energy system in the same way and with the same level of ease that they are enjoying in other sectors: they are interested in having more control over their household consumption and in tracing the origin of the electricity they use. Digitalisation is making this possible.

Holger Lösch, Deputy Director General at the Federation of German Industries (BDI)

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