Energy policy: Solar support for small systems should remain

Berlin. The Union and the SPD are making progress in their negotiations on future support for renewable energy production. According to the SPD, the specialist politicians agree on the reform of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). The coalition partners have not yet agreed on the desired overall energy policy package. The main point of contention remains the rules for connecting new solar and wind turbines.

The energy policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Nina Scheer, wrote on Friday in an internal letter available to dpa that after the technical agreement on the EEG, the feed-in tariff should be retained for smaller solar systems with an output of up to 25 kilowatts. The feed-in tariff is an amount that operators of green electricity systems receive for the electricity fed into the public power grid.

According to the draft presented by Federal Economics Minister Katherina Reiche at the end of July, new small systems with an installed capacity of less than 25 kilowatts, especially small roof-mounted photovoltaics, should no longer receive permanent funding from 2027. There should be lower payments for a transitional period of three years. Households should then market their electricity on electricity exchanges.

SPD parliamentary group vice-president Armand Zorn announced on Saturday that the energy experts from the SPD and Union parliamentary groups had “reached a technical agreement on the EEG amendment as part of the coalition negotiations”. Together with Union faction deputy Sepp Müller (CDU), he aims to complete negotiations on all energy policy bills in the coming weeks “in order to reach the Federal Council meeting on December 18, 2026”. An agreement must be reached on the overall package.

In Scheer's opinion, the EEG should definitely be passed “this year” so that funding for solar and wind turbines is also possible in the new year. No agreement has yet been reached on the network package, which was presented in July together with the EEG reform draft by Economics Minister Reiche.

Reiche wants to better coordinate the expansion of renewable energies and the expansion of the electricity grid in order to reduce costs. The minister wants to limit compensation for new wind power and solar systems if they have to be temporarily switched off if there is a risk of grid overload.

The SPD with its expert Scheer, on the other hand, is relying on a concept that limits the maximum permissible feed-in power to a value below the possible peak power of the system. The networks would then have to be expanded less.