Topic of the month: National Hydrogen Strategy
„The cabinet’s decision on the NSW is scheduled for December 3 or 10. After the decision, a conference open to the press will be held in Berlin. Federal Minister Altmaier, Federal Minister Karliczek and Federal Minister Scheuer will attend the conference“. This plan was stated in a note from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy dated August 6, 2019, describing the consulting services to be provided by the German Energy Agency (Dena), an energy think-tank, to implement this schedule. For the sake of completeness: “NWS” means National Hydrogen Strategy .
December 3 and December 10 passed, and not even a draft of the strategy was released. Even the preliminary discussions among the „black“ ministries (in German party politics, „black“ is used to refer to the Christian Democratic Party, CDU, or the Christian Social Party, CSU) was much harder and controversial than expected. Finally, at the end of January, the first draft of a hydrogen strategy was published (ener|gate Gasmarkt 03/20). Afterwards, the formal process of interministerial consultation started. This process was much more time-consuming than expected. One cabinet appointment after the other was postponed. It was bizarre. The involved ministries had dissenting views mainly on four topics.
Market trendsGas consumption in Covid-19 times
The consultancies enervis and Team Consult analysed the gas consumption more thoroughly, in particular in the industrial sector. Both applied different approaches: Using the allocation data, Enervis calculated a “status quo” forecast for the consumption between mid-March and mid-May 2020 based on the historical allocation data and some assumptions about the correlation between some external factors and industrial gas consumption. This was compared with the real allocation data during that times span. The deviations are volatile for the single weeks; in total, gas consumption was eight per cent lower than in the forecast of the status quo.
Unlike the bottom-up approach of enervis, Team Consult chose a more top-down approach. The assessments and forecasts for the Corona Energy Market Radar that has been published since March 2020 are based on the economic forecasts of several economic research institutes, the business climate index of ifo, also an economic research institute and production indices. Team Consult makes an assessment for the whole year, applying an optimistic and a pessimistic scenario. At the beginning of May, the consultants were, in general, more bearish – even in their optimistic scenario. For 2020 they estimated a decrease in consumption of 60 to 100 TWh, but without any temperature adjustment. In the June edition of the Radar, they reduced the estimate to 25 to 40 TWh. Besides the temperature adjustment, higher gas consumption for power production is
the driver of the optimistic forecast. What is interesting is the assessment of a Covid-19-related reduction in consumption in different industry sectors based on the ifo index.