FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany is running far behind in a program to install power lines to help transmit renewable energy as red tape and protests drag progress to a snail’s pace.

Energy think-tank Dena last week tabled figures suggesting that the planned renewables boom can only happen if 3,600 km of new high voltage lines, or an addition of 10 percent to the existing lines, are built by 2020.

BONN, Germany, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Germany’s energy regulator
Matthias Kurth on Tuesday said 37 out of 139 power grid
expansion projects were currently behind schedule due to public
opposition and long planning procedures.

Many of the 24 high priority projects identified last summer
in a special law (Enlag) to speed them up faced significant
delays, in some cases by several years, said Kurth, who is
president of the Federal Network Agency.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Europe may not be able to sustain all its proposed gas supply pipelines but will need to build at least some soon to ensure security of supply in the latter half of this decade.

Scarred by the Russia-Ukraine gas row of 2009, which cut about a fifth of Europe’s supply in mid winter, major European gas consumers plan many pipelines to promising producing regions in central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

BERLIN, Nov 9 (Reuters) – European gas suppliers and retail
distributors are bogged down by sustained oversupply in the
market while government policy favours renewable power sources,
both of which they say make investment in infrastructure risky.

Panellists at the 350-strong European Autumn Gas Conference
(EAGC) said suppliers in the region, the world’s largest
importer, need to see a recovery in demand to take heart.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The search for unconventional gas in Europe will not quickly generate new supplies to help the region cut its dependency on imports, an energy security expert at the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

“Europe’s shale gas potential has to be better known and there is the issue of the projects’ acceptability,” said Didier Houssin, director of energy markets and security at the Paris-based IEA in conversation with Reuters at a conference.

FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) – Germany must press on with the pace of power transmission grid expansion or risk falling behind its newly decided strategy for a renewable energy future, the country’s energy regulator said on Monday.

“The current speed is too slow,” said the president of the Bundesnetzagentur (BnetzA), Matthias Kurth, in a telephone interview with Reuters.

LONDON/FRANKURT (Reuters) – German wholesale power prices may fall due to rising renewable and extended nuclear capacity, but volatility increases and the legal environment is likely to prevent the drop to reach end users.

Helped by generous subsidies, renewable energy capacity has skryrocketed in Germany in past years.

FRANKFURT/MUNICH (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was confident a law extending the lives of nuclear power reactors could be passed without backing from the upper house of parliament, setting up a clash with opposition parties.

Merkel’s centre-right ruling coalition ended months of division on Sunday by agreeing the country’s 17 nuclear power plants should operate longer than planned, giving each reactor an average extension of about 12 years.

FRANKFURT/MUNICH (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she was confident that a law to extend the lives of nuclear power reactors could be passed without backing from the upper house of parliament, setting up a clash with opposition parties.

Her center-right ruling coalition ended months of division late on Sunday by agreeing that the country’s 17 nuclear power plants should operate longer than planned, giving each reactor an average extension of about 12 years.

MUNICH, Sept 6 (Reuters) – European Union energy
commissioner Gunether Oettinger on Monday welcomed Germany’s
nuclear energy move made by the government on Sunday, saying
plans to grant nuclear plants longer life cycles tied in with
wider energy plans for the bloc.

Talking to reporters at an energy conference in Munich, he
said: “The EU wants to lay down a focus for the next 10 years of
energy policy in the winter and Germany’s decision fits in
exactly at the right time.”