By Andrew Coffman Smith

Germany's plans to cut carbon emissions by 80% of its 1990 levels by 2050 is going to cost roughly €1.1 trillion and will require 290 GW of renewable electric sources while a 90% reduction is going to require 540 GW, a new report has found.

The Nov. 5 report by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Systems confirms the findings of a previous 2013 study on the country's ambitious Energiewende policy, which simultaneously seeks to achieve 80% of renewable electricity sources by 2050.

Renewable sources in Germany increased from 12.3 GW in 2000 to 85 GW in 2013 and supplied 27.4% of its electric mix in 2014, according to a separate Nov. 10 report compiled by the International Renewable Energy Agency and commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Figures released by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries in December 2014, show that onshore wind supplied 32.5% of renewable generation for 2014 followed by biomass at 27.2%, solar PV at 22.4% and hydro at 13.2%

In comparison to the United States, a 2012 report by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that it is going to require a total capacity of 920 GW of renewable sources for the U.S. to achieve a mix of 80% renewable generation by 2050. According to the NREL's 2014 Renewable Energy Data Book, the U.S. had more than 179 GW of renewable electricity capacity in 2014, which constituted 15.5% of total installed capacity. Nearly half of that capacity is hydropower, but roughly one third is wind and 6% is solar.

Deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute and the report's author, Professor Hans-Martin Henning, said in a press release, that the most cost-effective scenario for Germany's energy transition to achieve the 80% reductions is going to cost around 27% higher than it would to maintain the current generation mix.

However, Henning said, if the price for fossil fuels increase 3% annually then the total cost for the energy transition will cost virtually the same as it would to maintain the current generation mix and would additionally reduce CO2 emissions by 85%.

All scenarios in the Fraunhofer Institute study, titled "Was Kostet die Energiewende?," show an increase in production and consumption of electricity, as well as the need for coal and nuclear substitutes such as natural gas or synthetic fuels produced by hydrogen, methane and renewables.

According to the various scenarios studied by the Fraunhofer Institute, wind and photovoltaic solar will play a key role alongside a mix of fossil, biomass, synthetic fuels and natural gas with solar and electric heat pumps providing heat for buildings. The report also said Germany's Energiewende requires a high degree of flexibility for generation and application of new technologies in the field of buildings and transportation.

Already, Germany in the next 7 years is scheduled to retire roughly 14,057 MW of conventional generation as it phases out nuclear by 2022 and puts its lignite-fired plants on standby until shutting them down for good by 2019. On Oct. 14, Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved a draft law to ensure Germany's utilities are held liable for the €47.6 billion costs of shutting down and decommissioning the nuclear plants. The move by Merkel seeks to stop utilities such as E.ON SE from including nuclear assets in plans to spin off its conventional generation assets.