New era for trucks + France’s cons • Table.Briefings

Dear reader,

It feels like a collective déjà vu: COVID dominates the news again due to a new variant, Omicron, that was first discovered in South Africa. Many countries are reacting with travel restrictions, but yet again, it’s too late: The new virus is already here, already detected in the EU in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Delta is already raging in Europe, the current global hotspot of the pandemic, and intensive care units are full in many places. No one needs an even more contagious, even more dangerous variant in this situation. But not enough is known about Omicron yet; it will take a few days, maybe weeks, for the analysis, according to the WHO.

Cross-border travel is becoming difficult again, and the World Trade Organization has already had to cancel its ministerial meeting in Geneva as a result. The export industry warns that new travel restrictions would be a “disaster” for companies struggling with supply problems. Ursula von der Leyen speaks of a “race against time” and recommends that member states speed up their vaccination campaigns. But how? The debate on compulsory vaccinations will now also have a lot of force in Germany. Whether the traffic light coalition partners want it or not.

The young alliance of parties clashed for the first time on the weekend over diesel. Transport policy is delicate because many Greens struggle to live with the result of the negotiations between their own party leadership and an FDP transport minister. Robert Habeck and Co. will have to use a lot of persuasive power, the ballot on the coalition agreement and personnel tableau is already underway. Read more about this in the Apéro.

There is little in the coalition agreement about freight transport. Yet this area is also undergoing a radical change, not least due to EU limits for trucks, which are to be raised even further. To meet them, manufacturers are increasingly turning to battery-powered trucks, as Christian Domke-Seidel reports. Hydrogen propulsion could fall behind.

Stay safe.

Your
Till Hoppe

Battery or hydrogen: dispute over the truck future

The coalition agreement of the future federal government is short on words at this point – two and a half lines are enough to take account of the structural change in freight transport. The SPD, Greens, and FDP would support the “further development of CO2 fleet limits for commercial vehicles” and the “proposals of the European Commission for the development of refueling and charging infrastructure for trucks“, it says. This refers to the proposed regulation on the expansion of charging infrastructure for alternative fuels (AFIR).

Trucks and buses are responsible for 26 percent of CO2 emissions in European road traffic. Light commercial vehicles for a further 13 percent. As with passenger cars, the Commission also wants to work with fleet limits for trucks in order to achieve the climate targets. Compared to 2021, emissions are to be reduced by 30 percent by 2030. Next year, however, the EU Commission wants to raise the hurdle. If it is up to the coalition agreement, the German government will support the project.

“I expect a tightening. If you look at what manufacturers have announced, it should be around 45 percent,” says Patrick Plötz, head of the Energy Economics business unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research. This is not achievable with conventional drives: “A reduction of 30 percent is perhaps feasible with optimizations to the combustion engine, albeit at a high cost. If manufacturers want to achieve more, they need zero-emission vehicles.”

Electric truck overtakes hydrogen drive

For a long time, hydrogen propulsion was considered the most likely future in road freight transport. That has changed. “There is some uncertainty about which technology will take which role in trucks. That is changing very quickly at the moment,” says Plötz: “For the last two or three years, electric trucks have been given much more confidence because there has been enormous progress in battery technology. Accordingly, manufacturers are also bringing more electric trucks onto the market.”

According to ACEA, the umbrella organization of European automakers, there are 6.2 million medium and large trucks on Europe’s roads. Plötz believes it is realistic that around five percent of these could be driving purely electrically by 2030. As a first step, the core network of the EU should be equipped with charging stations that are no more than a hundred kilometers apart. This would require 800 stations – 150 of them in Germany – with an average of 2.5 charging points.

If the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) has its way, the distance should only be fifty kilometers. That would be 1,600 charging stations. Because of the better distribution, however, with fewer charging points per station: “Not only for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles but also for heavy commercial vehicles and coaches, a comprehensive expansion of e-charging stations plays a special role in ensuring the European trade in goods and passenger transport,” says a VDA spokeswoman.

Only one in five trucks in long-distance use

The comparatively low number of publicly accessible charging points compared to cars can be attributed primarily to the disposition of trucks, as the environmental organization Transport & Environment (T&E) calculates. Half of all truck journeys take place over short distances (less than fifty kilometers). In this case, an electric truck would be charged at its home station or the customer’s site. Perhaps even several times a day. Only one in five trucks (around 1.3 million) would be on long-distance journeys – i.e., journeys longer than 400 kilometers and can last several days.

Meanwhile, opinions differ on the subject of hydrogen trucks. Plötz hardly gives them a chance due to the enormous progress in battery technology and the head start experience with electric trucks. In addition, there are hardly any technical standards (also in the area of safety) for hydrogen vehicles.

However, the VDA calls on the EU to also consider this technology: “The AFIR should also be improved with regard to the provision of a hydrogen infrastructure. In this context, the respective refueling stations should already be designed in such a way that they can be used equally by all vehicle categories.” Christian Domke-Seidel

France’s conservatives: stuck between Macron and Le Pen

France’s bourgeois-conservative camp ruled the country for a long time – President Jacques Chirac and his successor Nicolas Sarkozy belonged to it. In recent years, however, the once-great people’s party has lost enormous importance. In the presidential election in April 2022, the Republicans, as the party is now known after several name changes, have a lot at stake.

Four male and one female candidate are running to challenge Emmanuel Macron, but no one stands out so far. On December 4th, the party’s roughly 150,000 members are now to elect their presidential candidate.

Republicans find themselves squeezed between Macron, who is in the political center and has poached many conservatives, and Marine Le Pen‘s far-right political fringe. In the 2017 election, conservative former prime minister François Fillon was still considered the favorite – until he stumbled over an affair involving his wife’s sham employment. Macron used this scandal for his victory.

The conservatives, however, are still in a somewhat better position than the other once-great people’s party – the Socialists. With their candidate, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Socialists are only polling between four and five percent in the first round.

Behind the far-right in polls

Among the Conservatives, Xavier Bertrand performs best (13-14 percent), followed by Valérie Pécresse (9-11 percent) and Michel Barnier (9-10 percent). At the back are Éric Ciotti (5 percent) and Philippe Juvin (3-4 percent). However, with these figures, they would all currently have no chance of making it to the second round of voting, the run-off.

The incumbent Macron has been stable in the polls for the first round of the election for weeks at 25 to 27 percent. The president is doing well because his crisis management during the pandemic was largely well-received by the population and his vaccination campaign was successful. The far-right candidates Marine Le Pen (by 20 percent) and Éric Zemmour (by 15 percent), are also ahead of the conservative candidates.

The choice of the conservative candidate is nevertheless being closely watched by Macron, according to France’s media. After all, the party has strong roots above all in the countryside. However, Macron has no reason for great concern so far: None of the candidates has the aura of a dangerous opponent – or enough points in the polls. While Macron has not yet officially declared, it is considered certain that he will run again. Numerous French mayors have already called for a second mandate for the president.

In their distress, the conservatives have opted for a shift to the right. The candidates have been debating in public for weeks, and no significant differences have emerged. At least this brought them back into the limelight – the number of party supporters increased from 80,000 to 150,000 within ten weeks.

The debates were mainly about topics that the extreme right also occupies: immigration and security. According to polls in France, the issue of purchasing power is of particular interest to voters in view of rising prices.

Barnier slowly catching up

After the debates, it was not clear which candidate was the most convincing. Bertrand was more often considered the winner, but so was Barnier. The former Brexit chief negotiator for the EU was previously rather unknown to the general public, but that is now changing. He slowly caught up in the polls recently. “I am ready,” Barnier recently declared.

The 70-year-old is the oldest of the candidates. He relies on his experience and network as a former senator, MP, and EU Commissioner for the Internal Market. He has also been a minister several times for foreign affairs, Europe, and the environment. In the post of “Monsieur Brexit”, Barnier has “experienced the recognition of a head of state”, which is how Secretary of State for Europe Clément Beaune described him. Moreover, he is very discreet. But his calm manner is not well received everywhere: He lacks persuasive power, wrote Le Journal du Dimanche.

Barnier is staging himself as a wise conciliator in an attempt to distance himself from Macron, who many see as arrogant. Barnier is pro-European, but many of his messages clash with what he advocated as a Brexit negotiator. He calls for a moratorium on immigration and asylum policy, wants to “win back control” for France, and is critical of the Schengen agreement. Moreover, he announced: “I want to change the EU.” His anti-EU program has won him sympathy within his party.

Xavier Bertrand: Le Pen defeated

But the front-runner at the moment is someone else: Xavier Bertrand, the 56-year-old president of the Hauts-de-France region and former health and labor minister. He calls for strengthening the nation-states in the EU – a theme that Marine Le Pen also has on offer. He wants to control immigration to France via a quota system. In Bertrand’s favor is that he won the regional elections in northern France in the summer against Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party, which is strong there. Since then, he’s been on the upswing and has adopted a grassroots approach.

Former trade minister and government spokeswoman Valérie Pécresse, who was still considered a moderate on the spectrum of the five candidates, has also toughened her tone. The 54-year-old, who is currently president of the Ile-de-France region around Paris, wants to take stronger action against illegal immigration. She promises to restore “French pride” and positions herself as a “woman of order and reformer”. Pécresse and Bertrand benefit from the fact that they currently hold offices in which they are in the public eye.

Éric Ciotti only has an outside chance. The 56-year-old MP for the Alpes-Maritimes département in the south of France wants to save France from further “descent”. He represents the right-wing of the Republicans. “My project will be on the right, with a very simple goal: France remains France.” For some in his party, that’s going too far – there could be resignations if he were nominated. Ciotti had even declared that in the event of a run-off between Macron and Zemmour, he would vote for the controversial moderator and not Macron.

An interesting candidate is Philippe Juvin: The 57-year-old mayor of La Garenne-Colombes near Paris has never given up his activity as a doctor. He is head of the emergency room at the Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris. The pandemic made him famous. He commented on the health situation in the country and the political decisions of the government. His motto: “I am an alternative for those who know that the traditional prescriptions no longer work.” Tanja Kuchenbecker

Employers’ association: Italy’s GDP likely to grow faster

Italy’s gross domestic product (GDP) is likely to grow faster than expected this year, according to the employers’ association Confindustria. The economy is expected to grow by 6.4 percent in 2021 despite current supply bottlenecks, the association announced on Saturday. In September, the government in Rome had held out the prospect of six percent.

According to Confindustria, the Italian economy could reach pre-crisis levels as early as the first quarter of 2022. The country was hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and had to endure the steepest recession in its post-war period. Now, however, the economy is recovering rapidly. Between July and September, GDP rose by 2.6 percent compared to the previous quarter.

By comparison, the European Commission expects growth of five percent for the EU as a whole this year and 2.7 percent for Germany. rtr/tho

Czech Republic: new head of government Fiala in office

The new prime minister Petr Fiala has been inaugurated in the Czech Republic under special Corona protection. President Milos Zeman appointed the center-right politician as head of government on Sunday. The 77-year-old head of state sat shielded in his wheelchair in a Plexiglas box at the ceremony after testing positive for COVID-19.

Fiala, 57, has been the opposition leader until now. He is the party leader of the eurosceptic and conservative Democratic Civic Party (DOS) and has formed a center-right coalition with other parties. He replaces Andrej Babiš, who lost his governing majority in the parliamentary elections in October. rtr

WTO postpones ministerial conference

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has indefinitely postponed its first ministerial meeting in four years due to the new COVID variant. The WTO said its members agreed late Friday to postpone the ministerial meeting after the outbreak of the new Omicron variant led to travel restrictions that prevented many ministers from reaching Geneva. A new date has not yet been set.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the postponement did not mean negotiations should stop. “On the contrary, delegations in Geneva should be fully capable of closing as many gaps as possible. This new variation reminds us once again of the urgency of the work we are tasked with,” she said in a statement.

Switzerland, home to the World Trade Organization, banned direct flights from South Africa and surrounding regions on Friday and imposed testing and quarantine restrictions on travel from other countries, including Belgium, Hong Kong, and Israel.

Due to the cancelation, the meeting of EU trade ministers that was to have taken place in the run-up to the WTO meeting in Geneva was also canceled. There, the EU states wanted to coordinate their common position. The conference was supposed to discuss the reform of the organization, which is currently in crisis due to the US blockade of its dispute settlement system, among other things. Also on the agenda were talks on access to COVID vaccines and an agreement on the protection of fish stocks. rtr/tho

Smart buildings for a smart energy transition

Matthias Hartmann

2022 will be a decisive year for the energy transition in Germany. The expansion of renewable energies is faltering – and at the same time, our electricity consumption is increasing due to electromobility, electricity-powered heat pumps, and, in the future, hydrogen electrolysis. Just a few days ago, the German Federal Ministry of Economics raised its forecast for electricity demand in 2030 once again. That’s why we absolutely need more speed in the energy transition. And we need a clear strategy to master the challenges ahead.

This strategy must also include digital technologies. Digitalization is a prerequisite for the success of the energy transition. Only with digital means can the volatile power generation from sun and wind be linked with the consumption side to form a secure, stable, and flexible overall system. The change of government is the best opportunity to initiate a real digital awakening in the energy sector. To advance smart meters, smart grids, and smart buildings, turn cities into smart cities, have the resources available at the right time in the right place, and put the energy transition as a whole on a digital foundation.

Increasing energy efficiency has a special role to play. Even if more energy from renewable sources is available in the future: We must reduce energy consumption. Huge potential for this lies in the real estate portfolio. At 2,956 petajoules, this sector accounts for a third of the energy demand and up to a quarter of the greenhouse gases emitted in Germany.

Need a digital renovation wave

The buildings sector was the only sector to miss its CO2 savings targets in 2020 – despite a warm winter. According to the Climate Protection Act, the entire sector must save 51 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030. This will not be achieved with the help of traditional energy renovation or thick insulation alone, but only with the help of smart technologies and a digital renovation wave.

As a Bitkom study has revealed, digital technologies can contribute almost a third to the building sector in Germany, meeting its climate targets for 2030. Up to 14.7 million tons of CO2 emissions could be saved. This corresponds to almost 30 percent of the target formulated in the Climate Protection Act for this sector. Another advantage: Digital technologies are ready for use quickly and without major investment and develop their potential immediately. And: They can often also be installed by tenants with a few simple steps and pay for themselves in a very short time.

Let’s look at heating and hot water supply, where the greatest potentials lie dormant. Which offices and floors of a building are currently occupied by people? Is the sun shining through the windows? A smart control system can automatically regulate heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. This leads to significant energy and CO2 savings compared to manual control, where thermostats and controllers are turned individually in each room.

Currently, more than 90 percent of energy consumption in the building sector is for heating and hot water production. With an ambitious and controlled use of the building automation described here, we could save up to 10.8 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030.

Politically set incentives for owners and tenants

This means: We need politically set incentives for owners and tenants of private and commercial real estate to bring the technologies quickly into the area. The same principle also applies to automated cooling and lighting of buildings. If these are controlled automatically, we could save up to 0.7 million tons of CO2 per year in Germany by 2025 with an ambitious expansion. The technologies have long been on the market – they just need to be deployed on a broad scale.

With the growing share of renewable energies, the importance of temporally flexible electricity consumption is also becoming more important. This means, for example, that heat pumps store heat in a building precisely when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing – and that the electric car charges its battery during precisely these times of strong solar or wind power generation.

Intelligent sector coupling, which automatically balances and controls the energy supply of buildings with various storage options such as hot water or the batteries of EVs, has great potential. More than 3 million tons of CO2 can be saved every year if the expansion continues at an accelerated pace.

In short, digital technologies are shaping the energy system of the future – in buildings and elsewhere. It is now important to think of digitization and climate protection together. The potential for our country is enormous.

Andreas Scheuer and Markus Söder not only share party membership, both CSU politicians also have a penchant for hidden nastiness. In the case of Söder, CDU rival Armin Laschet was often the target of verbal jibes; in Scheuer’s case, it’s now the Greens: “It’s nice that the traffic light coalition is continuing my work of the last few years,” the still transport minister told the dpa, a German news agency.

Scheuer thus gleefully rubbed salt into the wound of the eco-party, for which the CSU man was probably the worst transport minister of all time. Many Green politicians and members, reading the traffic light coalition agreement and looking at the distribution of portfolios, have the impression that Scheuer is not so wrong.

That would be the only explanation for the angry reactions that the prospective FDP transport minister Volker Wissing received at the weekend. He had declared in the newspaper “Bild” that he wanted to protect diesel drivers from additional burdens and “make sure that higher energy taxes on diesel fuels are compensated by lower vehicle taxes”.

This is similarly stated in the coalition agreement, formulated somewhat more softly as a test order. The logic: If the preferential tax treatment of diesel fuels ends as a result of the implementation of the revised EU Energy Tax Directive, the higher vehicle taxes for diesel vehicles are to be lowered in return. This would give diesel and petrol cars equal treatment.

The indignant reactions of many Green politicians are therefore directed as much at Wissing as at their own party leadership. The negotiators Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock, and Michael Kellner, it seems, have allowed themselves to be pulled over the barrel on a project that is close to the Greens’ heart: the change in transport policy. This could be dangerous for the not-yet-coalition in the Greens’ referendum.

Cargo bikes instead of SUVs – that’s not possible with the FDP. Christian Lindner indulges his passion for fast cars; among other things, he owns a 1982 Porsche 911 SC. By the way, this is what he has in common with Andreas Scheuer: He has been driving Franz-Josef Strauß’ BMW for three years. Till Hoppe

EUROPE.TABLE EDITORS

Till
Hoppe

Charlotte
Wirth

Falk
Steiner

Timo
Landenberger

Corinna
Visser

Lukas
Knigge

Eric
Bonse

Sarah
Schaefer

Manuel
Berkel

Lisa-Martina
Klein

Markus
Grabitz

Stephan
Israel

Claire
Stam