29 June 2020

In 2019, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy funded over 4,400 projects with around 510 million euros.

For applied energy research, this represents an increase of almost 14 per cent over the previous year: In 2018, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) invested around 448 million euros in a total of 4,026 ongoing projects researching innovative energy and efficiency technologies. The Federal Government has laid down the funding for energy research in the 7th Energy Research Programme. The BMWi is responsible for application-oriented energy research and plays a leading role in developing the programmatic orientation of energy research policy.

In 2019, the BMWi provided around 217.3 million euros for research into innovative technologies that can be used to generate power from naturally occurring resources. The largest share of this was allocated to the funding topic of photovoltaics: Here, 491 ongoing projects were supported with almost 96 million euros. 135 new photovoltaic projects with a total of around 100 million euros in subsidies were approved. The focal area of the funding will be research into innovative production technologies. Cells based on crystalline silicon as a semiconductor are at the forefront of development. In all research approaches it is important that new concepts can be transferred from the laboratory to industrial production processes.

Further optimising systems technology

Wind power also accounts for a large share of the funding. In 2019, the BMWi provided almost 73 million euros for 461 ongoing projects in this funding area. New approvals were granted for 112 projects with around 79 million euros. The focus is on the further optimisation of systems technology. Apart from the location, this is decisive for the extent of the electricity production costs. Plant elements such as tower, gears or generator can contribute significantly to reducing costs and increasing plant reliability.

Other major funding topics in 2019 were thermal power plants with incentives and grants of around 28 million euros, and geothermal energy with around 13 million euros. The BMWi allocated around 5 million euros for research into the energy-efficient use of biogenic residual and waste materials, and around 1.7 million euros for the funding topic of hydroelectric power and ocean power.