Dr. Franziska Lietz leads the environmental law team at the law firm Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Ritter Gent Collegen and has been advising on energy law for many years. Her focus areas include corporate compliance, such as legal waste management, chemical law issues, and plant-related emissions protection law. In energy law, her work encompasses the design of supply concepts with renewable energies, legal issues of electromobility, electricity storage (especially Power-to-Gas), the development of hydrogen infrastructures, and sector coupling. Additionally, she contributes to the development of the firm's digital legal consulting products and supports startups in the renewable energy and hydrogen sectors.
1. Dear Franziska, energy efficiency has recently played a dominant role in energy law. In which laws does it appear, and is there an official definition that clearly specifies what the legislator means by energy efficiency?
That's an interesting question! The term "energy efficiency" appears in many places in German law. However, there is no universally accepted definition, which makes it a bit difficult to pin down exactly what this term means.
Let’s start with the term that shares the same name: the Energy Efficiency Act. Here’s a nice, short, and concise definition: Energy efficiency is the ratio of the output of power, services, goods, or energy to the energy input. An increase in energy efficiency would therefore be an increase in this output relative to the use of a specific amount of energy.
The Federal Immission Control Act also requires operators of all licensed facilities (often in the industry) to use energy sparingly and efficiently as a basic obligation. However, this is not further specified.
Finally, eligibility for certain privileges for energy-intensive companies is now always contingent on energy efficiency or energy efficiency measures. The focus here is on measures identified as part of an energy management system.
Although all three topics deal with something similar—and ultimately aim to reduce the energy required to produce a specific output—the approaches and terminology are by no means identical.
2. Energy efficiency improvements are taken into account when approving incentive programs. Which grants are contingent upon the implementation of efficiency measures?
Yes, this is indeed a new „trend“ in legislation—granting privileges only in exchange for something in return. This stems from the European Commission, which now intends to grant subsidies to energy-intensive companies only under this condition. This currently applies to the Energy Financing Act (EnFG), electricity price compensation, and the BECV Regulation on Measures to Prevent Carbon Leakage through the National Fuel Emissions Trading System (BEHG Carbon Leakage Regulation—BECV).
3. Energy efficiency can be viewed not only in terms of operational efficiency but also from a systemic perspective (i.e., the integration of renewable generation through flexibility). Do systemic efficiency efforts also qualify as environmental measures that could enable companies to receive grants?
No, in fact, both the energy efficiency measures under the privileges and the requirements under the Energy Efficiency Act—as well as the very broadly worded requirement of the Federal Immission Control Act—always refer to the company itself, that is, everything behind the grid connection point within the customer’s own facility. The term “energy efficiency” is therefore not extended to the power grid, a nationwide perspective, or the integration of renewable energy sources—even though the latter, in conjunction with flexibility, would naturally be an important concern.
4. From your personal perspective, would it be desirable to promote systemic efficiency in addition to operational efficiency? And if so, how could that be implemented?
Of course, that is certainly desirable. From the perspective of policymakers or lawmakers, however, it seems that network expansion is always given priority over flexibility. That said, there have been efforts recently to strengthen flexibility. This is evident, for example, in Section 14a of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG), which is intended to help relieve the burden on low-voltage grids and primarily addresses more flexible applications such as charging stations and heat pumps. Nevertheless, flexibility—even though it is often argued that it can significantly contribute to reducing the need for grid expansion—often seems to be the „stepchild“ of the energy transition.
However, with the increasing expansion of (mostly fluctuating) renewables, the issue is also becoming increasingly important. For example, it plays an important role for PPAs or renewable self-generation, the fact that the generation and consumption profiles are often not a good match plays a role. I would like to take this as an opportunity to draw attention to the EE Industrie initiative, which is being driven forward by the founder of our law firm, Kai Gent. Here, a group of energy-intensive companies is not only trying to jointly develop renewable electricity generation, but also to distribute the load in such a way that it best matches the generation profile, e.g. through power-to-heat. In my view, however, it is a shame that industrial companies have to take this into their own hands and that the legislator offers little support.
5. Thank you very much for your time and your interesting insights. To wrap up, we’d like to ask you a „make a wish“ question: How would you draft a law that helps companies align their processes even more closely with renewable energy generation?
It's not that simple. I think it would require a whole box of instruments. To pick out individual points that I think are important, I would first suggest that the conditions for PPAs be facilitated in such a way that companies PPAs as easily as a simple electricity supply contract, e.g. by eliminating difficulties with regard to balancing. It should also be made easier for industrial companies to increase their electrification; high construction cost subsidies for any necessary expansion of the grid connection and the general increase in grid fees are currently having an adverse effect. But as I said, the most important thing is actually a consistent overall system that sensibly combines generation and consumption, but also flexibility and constancy (e.g. base load, inflexible processes).
