German road mobility demand at 106TWh in 2030

Germany's road transport sector will need 105.5TWh of electricity in 2030, or about 20pc of the country's current total.

The country's national electric mobility platform NPM expects transport sector power demand to be particularly high, at 69.4TWh, for battery-electric mobility. Power demand in the road transport sector for producing hydrogen and power-to-liquid (PtL) fuels, will be 17.5TWh and 18.5TWh, respectively, in 2030, the NPM forecasts.

The NPM bases its calculations on the assumption that Germany will have 14mn electric vehicles (EV) in 2030, of which 10.8mn would be battery-electric and 3.2mn hybrid battery-electric vehicles. The battery-electric segment also encompasses buses and trucks, including hybrid overhead-powered electric trucks.

The future deployment of hydrogen and PtL in the road transport sector is more difficult to assess, the NPM says. It will depend, mainly, on future technology developments and cost structures. For instance, trucks can use hydrogen either in gaseous form at a pressure of 350 bar or in liquid form — the NPM suggests "soon" reaching a "harmonisation" to avoid stranded investments and the necessity for refitting measures. The demand for hydrogen and PtL will also depend on the extent to which imports of green hydrogen or PtL take off.

Policy makers could provide more clarity on the way forward, based for instance on confidential talks with both manufacturers and the demand side, the NPM suggests.

The NPM also urges policy makers to rapidly boost growth in renewable power capacities to ensure there will be sufficient green power in Germany's system.

For the "coupling" of the energy and the transport sectors to be successful, the NPM said that both the charging infrastructure and the power grids will need to be strongly extended. New, "smart" technologies, such as the bidirectional charging of EVs, will contribute to alleviating grid bottlenecks during peak load times, and to a better integration of renewable energies.

German energy minister Peter Altmaier last week said that a long-awaited draft "law on controllable facilities", which would lay down rules for incentivising flexibility on the demand side, will not be passed, as originally planned, by the outgoing government ahead of federal elections on 26 September.

An earlier draft had been withdrawn in January following an uproar from car association VDA and consumer and renewables associations.

The NPM in its calculations assumes an efficiency rate of 70pc for the electrolysis process for hydrogen, and of 51pc for power-to-liquid (PtL) fuels. It puts charging losses at 10pc.

The report did not focus on the railway, the shipping or the aviation sectors.

The NPM was set up in 2018. It consists of six working groups falling under the remit of either the transport and digital infrastructure ministry, or the economic affairs and energy ministry.

This week's report was drawn up by working group five, which focuses on sector coupling, in particular the link-up of the transport and energy grids. Other working groups address the issues of, for instance, battery cell production (working group four) or sustainable mobility (working group two).

By Chloe Jardine