Shortly after the shutdown of the Swiss old reactor Mühleberg it goes Philippsburg 2 nuclear power plantfrom the grid on 31.12.2019 as planned. This will be followed in a few months by Fessenheimthe two oldest reactors in France. In addition, at the end of the year in Sweden, the 45-year-old "Ring neck 2" from the grid. Shutting down nuclear reactors significantly reduces the risk of accidents and avoids masses of radiating nuclear waste and its transport in Castor containers.
In 1989, there were still 177 nuclear reactors in Europe. An interactive map of the remaining 126 still in operation (As of 1 January 2019, there should still be 121 after the shutdown of the above-mentioned nuclear power plants) can be found here: www.global2000.at/karte-atomkraft-europa
Three years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, implementation is progressing, but not fast enough: worldwide, ambition must increase significantly to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Federal Minister Müller and Federal Minister Schulze will take stock of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at the joint conference "Accelerating change - for a sustainable development worldwide and in Germany" on 5 November in Berlin. Together with Hajia Alima Mahama, Ghana's Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, and high-ranking representatives from civil society, business and academia, they will discuss how change can be significantly accelerated in Germany and worldwide.
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze: "Sustainable development is not an elite project. Quite the opposite: people and nature should be better off in 2030, which benefits everyone. The shift towards an emission-free economy produces value added and jobs and can help innovations to make a breakthrough that are in demand worldwide. Ambitious sustainability policy is therefore our great common project for progress, and the 2030 Agenda is our compass for this."
Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller: "The world is looking to us when it comes to implementing the 2030 Agenda: as rich countries, we ourselves must set a good example - because people in developing countries are suffering from our way of consuming and from our lifestyle. One consequence is climate change, for which the industrialised countries are primarily responsible: We emit an average of ten tons of CO2 per capita. In Somalia, the figure is just 100 kilos. But the people in Africa, Bangladesh and many other developing countries are the main ones affected. We must and can make globalization just, change our consumption and our economy in a sustainable way, and thus preserve creation for future generations."
Despite positive trends and global efforts, progress towards achieving the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been insufficient in many cases: for example, the proportion of the world's absolute poor has fallen from 26.9 per cent in 2000 to 9.2 per cent today, and child mortality in developing countries has been halved since 2000. At the same time, however, the number of people suffering from hunger has risen again in the last three years, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The likelihood of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is diminishing, and over eight million tonnes of plastic waste continue to enter the oceans every year. At the next UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2019, heads of state and government will meet for the first time to take stock of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. This summit has a crucial role to play; it should send the strongest possible political signal from heads of state and government for accelerated economic and social change.
With the new edition of the German Sustainability Strategy adopted in 2017, the Federal Government has taken a first important step towards SDG implementation in Germany and in the context of international cooperation with its partner countries. The Federal Government is currently updating this strategy in order to further strengthen the idea of sustainability in all policy areas. In the process, the suggestions of civil society, business and science are being actively taken up.
BMU and BMZ are flanking this with additional measures: BMZ supports developing countries and emerging economies in implementing the 2030 Agenda, BMU contributes with its International Climate Initiative. Both ministries are also striving to achieve climate neutrality for their buildings by 2020.
In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. This showed that it is possible for the international community to join forces worldwide to tackle key challenges. These 17 closely interrelated goals have ensured worldwide that environmental, social and economic issues are thought of together and driven forward by all parts of society.
Berlin, 22 October 2018: Vattenfall Energy Solutions, Gewobag and the energy storage start-up Lumenion are jointly piloting a new type of sector-coupled steel storage system at Bottroper Weg in Berlin-Tegel, which absorbs regional generation peaks from wind and solar energy in a grid-serving manner and later provides the renewable energy as heat and electricity in line with demand.
"With this pilot project, we want to demonstrate the particular technical and economic suitability of thermal storage systems for the effective utilisation of large quantities of wind and solar energy in a very practical way," says Alexander Voigt, founder and Managing Director of Lumenion. "Some of our team have been working with renewable energies for over 30 years and with energy storage systems for over ten years. Based on this experience, we made a conscious decision in favour of steel as a storage medium for the second phase of the energy transition, which is just beginning."
The Lumenion steel storage system stores "electricity peaks" for less than 2 cent/KWh in a cost- and space-efficient manner at up to 650° Celsius as heat, which can be converted back into electricity using a turbine unit if required - or used entirely as heat. As a co-founder of Solon, Q-Cells and Younicos, among others, Voigt has been successfully launching solar modules and storage systems on the market since the 1990s.
Hanno Balzer, Managing Director of Vattenfall Energy Solutions GmbH: "Decentralised systems and energy storage are key factors in the energy transition; heat is a particularly cost-effective form of storage. If the stored energy can then be utilised not only as heat but also in the form of electricity, that is a milestone. The high-temperature storage system brings us a big step closer to this!"
Karsten Mitzinger from Gewobag Energie- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft adds: "The energy transition can only succeed if it is decentralised and based on partnership. As a housing industry, we are making our contribution to climate protection in our neighbourhoods. With this project, we are pleased to be able to demonstrate the good cooperation between energy supply companies, municipal housing associations and innovative start-ups. Only together can we master the major challenges of the energy transition."
In the Tegler pilot project, a 2.4 megawatt hour (MWh) storage block is being trialled for commercial use and transferred to regular operation. To this end, the unit will be integrated with an existing gas-powered CHP unit from Vattenfall Energy Solutions into the neighbourhood electricity and local heating supply of a 1970s apartment building owned by Gewobag. The storage system will temporarily absorb any power peaks that are not required and feed them into the heat supply later on as needed. In a second step, a reconversion into electricity is also planned.
Parallel to the construction of the pilot project, Lumenion is testing a 450 kWh prototype on the campus of the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in Oberschöneweide. The HTW is supporting Lumenion with practical accompanying research in the development, testing and validation of data, as well as in the regulation and operational management of the innovative storage system.
In further projects, Lumenion storage systems with 40 MWh and even 1,400 MWh are to be created as the next milestones. These giga-storages can integrate existing and newly added large quantities of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar power into the existing grids in a particularly favourable, efficient and demand-oriented manner, thus enabling a significant acceleration of the energy transition.
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