Survey highlights importance of green power for businesses

The availability of renewable energy will be a key location factor for businesses, according to a survey by the Transatlantic Sun and Wind Belt, an initiative of German and US green energy businesses.

The organisation said earlier this month the conclusion of the survey is that the fast expansion of renewables is critical for the future of Germany as a business location.

Together with opinion research firm Kantar, it polled 250 decision-makers from international corporations and large representatives of small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) between October to December 2022.

For most of them, the availability of green power is important or very important when choosing a place for new investments. Of the companies planning to invest in the next five years, more than 70% think so. Also, 90% of the companies believe that the importance of access to renewable energy will increase or strongly increase in the future.

The companies cite competitive advantages of climate-friendly products and their own sustainability targets. The expansion of renewables is also seen as a way to help limit cost pressures in view of the current energy crisis.

The initiative warns over Germany’s international standing as the majority of companies rank the country mid-range in terms of access to green infrastructure. It adds that Germany has lost its pioneering role due to a lack of political will, bureaucracy, long approval procedures and a lack of incentives, and has been overtaken by other countries, especially in northern Europe. China and Japan are also seen as leaders due to their significant investments in renewables.

“Companies have been looking at the cheaper energy prices in the US for some time. So far, they still rightly rate this location as weaker in the area of CO2-free energies. But this assessment is already changing now,” Milan Nitzschke, co-founder of the Sun and Wind Belt business initiative, further comments.

There are also regional divisions within Germany with the northern states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony seen as the most promising for renewable energy supply.

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