The development of the German energy market until 2030—A critical survey of selected scenarios

Many scenarios have been generated in the last years analysing the international energy market. The variety of these scenarios is manifold, as they are generated by different institutions using different methodological approaches and different framework assumptions. However, these scenarios can roughly be classified into three main groups: “moderate”, “climate protection” and “resource scarcity and high fossil fuel prices”. Analysing the German energy market makes a fourth scenario group necessary, which considers the possible revision of the decided nuclear energy phase out. Most of the existing scenarios developed by different institutions can be allocated into one of these groups. A representative scenario for each group has been selected to illustrate the development of the energy sector until 2030. Contrary to the worldwide primary energy demand (PED), the German PED decreases in each scenario, even though the drop differs strongly throughout the scenarios. On the other hand the structure of the PED in 2030 varies strongly for each scenario, especially regarding the share of fossil energy sources. However, a common robust result can be observed throughout all scenarios, namely the high increase in the share of the renewable energy resources, although the scenario generation processes are not always robust.