KfW to Provide 100 Billion Euros to Aid German Energy Transition

Germany’s state-owned lender KfW Group will provide more than 100 billion euros ($137 billion) over the next five years to ease the country’s transition from nuclear power to renewable-energy generation.

KfW will boost loans and guarantees for solar plants and wind farms and set up low-interest lending programs for building efficiency, regional power-grid growth, energy-storage projects and clean fossil fuel-fired generators, it said today.

The funds will contribute to the “immense investment needed” to realize the energy transition, Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Schroeder said in an e-mailed statement.

Europe’s biggest energy market got a record 20.8 percent of its power from renewable sources in the first half of the year, according to the country’s BDEW utility association. Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to boost the figure to at least 35 percent by 2020 and build fossil fuel-fired generators to make up for lost capacity after Germany shut more than 25 percent of its nuclear capacity in March and plans a complete exit by 2022.

KfW provided about 23 billion euros for energy projects in 2010, helping fund about 80 percent of wind turbines and 40 percent of solar panels installed in Germany. Turbine producers including Siemens AG (SIE) and Nordex SE (NDX1), and producers of solar photovoltaic equipment such as Q-Cells and Solarworld AG (SWV) have previously benefited from lending by the German state lender.

KfW will boost loans from 2012 under its standard renewable energy program to 25 million euros from 10 million euros to fund larger onshore wind farms, it said. Germany needs investment of about 250 billion euros this decade for the transition, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stefan Nicola in Berlin at snicola2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net