Germany has announced on Monday that it plans to build gas power plants that can run on hydrogen which cost the government $17 billion.
The economy ministry said in a statement that these subsidies are part of efforts to supplement intermittent renewable energy and speed up the transition to low carbon generation.
The Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck and the Finance Minister Christian Lindner agreed “that new power plant capacities of up to 4 x 2.5 GW will be put out to tender as H2-ready gas-fired power plants soon as part of the power plant strategy, which are to switch to hydrogen between 2035 and 2040,” the ministy added in the statament.
The German ministry said that the tender process for the four gas plants with total capacity of up to 10 gigawatts (GW) would take place soon. They did not specifcy the time. However, the hydrogen transition plans will be rolled out until 2032 to enable the plants to be fully switched to hydrogen between 2035 and 2040.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that according to “sources”, the first auction with 2.5 GW of capacity will be in the summer. The remaining three auctions with the same amount of capacity by autumn 2025 at the latest.
The German energy industry association, BDEW said that the agreement is “a crucial building block for a successful path towards climate neutrality” while at the same time maintaining supply security. “The expansion of new gas-fired power plants is the basis for the coal phase-out,” it said.
The government said that these “hydrogen-ready” gas plants are important supplement to intermittent renewables for the electric supply to make sure that the country depends less on coal.
