>> Even if there was 100% renewable energy for electricity production in 2050, that wouldn't help with emissions that stem from heating unless you'd also make people heat with electricity. And to do that, you'd need to lower the prices (or raise the prices of alternatives).
>That's right. In a future with large electricity surplus it makes sense to switch to electricity for heating. To make that attractive new price models are needed.
Again, maybe read the article before commenting. Because the article explains how the pricing structure is incentivising people to continue using fossil fuels, even with a large electricity surplus.
Again, the article is misleading and fails to understand the German electricity markets (!), how the EEG works, how the electricity production/distribution/sales works in Germany, the pricing and how consumers buy electricity.
For example: the renewable produced electricity is delivered onto the grid and the distribution takes it. As much as is possible. This is mixed with non-renewable electricity. The consumer then gets delivered the mix. The normal consumer has no choice - he always gets the mix. He/she can't prefer fossil fuels or renewable. If there is more coal generated electricity, the renewable energy electricity has a preference. By law:
'Netzbetreiber sind vorbehaltlich des § 11 verpflichtet, den gesamten angebotenen Strom aus Erneuerbaren Energien und aus Grubengas unverzüglich vorrangig abzunehmen'
translates: 'Grid companies ... are required to take all provided electricity generated from renewable energies ... immediately and with preference.'
That's the German law, the EEG, the renewable energy law.
Thus there is simply no choice: ALL AVAILABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY IS PUSHED INTO THE GRID IMMEDIATELY WITH PREFERENCE.
The provider of renewable energy gets a guaranteed price, based on some calculations. The goal is that this price goes down over the years.
Additionally coal gets further price burdens, which last year had an effect that a lot of coal was driven out of the market, because coal generated electricity was suddenly much less competitive.
Currently there is no time in Germany when renewable energy electricity drives the country 100% or more. There are weekends with lots of wind where we reach 60%. These days are still relatively rare.
On these days the consumer can not choose to get more wind electricity, since he AUTOMATICALLY gets as much as possible via the mix provided by the grid.
The producer gets his price. Now there might be additional capacity available and there might not be a buyer for it. Thus the price on the spot market gets zero for some short period of time or even negative.
But for me as an end consumer I can't choose what kind of electricity I get delivered. What I can influence is where I buy the electricity from and where the profits from that are invested. For example I buy my electricity from a local provider, which invests in renewable energy. The company not only buys renewable energy on the market, but also has its own renewable energy production. The provider invests their profits into more renewable energy production.
For coal its currently tough to make any profits and they are slowly driven out of the market:
Last year in the first half brown coal power plants were 650 Million Euros in the red.
Thus the consumer doesn't give the coal power plants any advantage.
The added capacity of renewable produced electricity is each year planned (but not completely determined) and the government has instruments to influence that.
The article makes the point that for heating, consumers are choosing to stay with fossil fuel-driven heating rather than install electrical heating, because the tax-driven pricing for electricity makes electricity so expensive that where there is a choice to not use it, people do.
It doesn't address any of the non-heating areas that you're talking about, and doesn't make any claims around any of the electricity supply market that doesn't affect heating.
So it doesn't matter if the first 90% of the electricity people consume is green, because they're not choosing to use electricity for this. Thus the renewable power is not replacing the fossil fuel power in this market.
Because the article has no clue what the discussion is in Germany.
There is right now no cheap surplus clean electricity for heating. The so-called 'free electricity' simply does not exist.
What is free is SOMETIMES electricity traded on the spot market, which is not necessary available when the consumer needs it for heating and not necessarily in the amount that it would be useful.
That heating is not done via electricity is because it's simply not currently a part of the energy policy in Germany to promote electrical heating on a large scale. It's also not seen as a useful consumption of surplus energy in the next decade. The topics which are discussed are heat pumps, combined-cycle power plants, better insulation, zero-energy houses (which don't need much heating, but need electricity for air distribution), centralized district-level heating, electrical heating from local PV installations, adding gas generated from electricity to the gas distribution, pellet heating, solar, ...
The cost for a complete electrification of the heating market is estimated to be 2 trillion Euro. That's far away. There is a plan to disallow new oil heating from 2026 onwards, but there is no plan to support direct electrical heating with incentives. There will be incentives for heat pumps, but the achievable market share is not large in the next years.
> Thus the renewable power is not replacing the fossil fuel power in this market.
Because it was/is not wanted. This may change, but there are many experts saying that it is currently not useful to promote direct electrical heating and heat pumps are currently not a large scale solution. Also: Currently the price (different from what is claimed in the article) for electrical heating is too high in Germany.
The next main usage for electricity probably will be for electric vehicles and the infrastructure for that will be expensive to build. Thus investments will be needed for the electricity used to decarbonize energy in traffic.
The main reasons why Germany isn't currently using electrical heating (besides heat pumps, etc), is that on a large scale electricity usage in other areas has a preference, electricity for heating currently is expensive (the 'free electricity' is a myth) and building the infrastructure would be very expensive.
>That's right. In a future with large electricity surplus it makes sense to switch to electricity for heating. To make that attractive new price models are needed.
Again, maybe read the article before commenting. Because the article explains how the pricing structure is incentivising people to continue using fossil fuels, even with a large electricity surplus.