Deutschland – Energie-Corn-Belt Europas?

Abstract

The amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in 2004 has established an attractive support of using renewable resources for energy production, which since then has fuelled a rapid expansion of the competitive cropping of energy maize. The regionalised agricultural sector model RAUMIS was applied to calculate expected energy maize production as well as impacts on agricultural land use, production and income. Accordingly, the energy maize acreage rises up to about 1.8 mill hectares in the long run leading to substantial land use changes. The produced energy maize for biogas and power generation respectively is sufficient to provide circa 9% of the current German total electricity generation. In regard to the costs for the current consumer which amount to 4.4 bn € per year compared to electricity on the basis of fossil resources as well as the long term commitment to this specific power generation technology it is strongly recommended to review the measures set out in the EEG with respect to its efficiency to achieve the pursued objectives.