Editorial September

In the 15th year since its inception, the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster Agency welcomed its 300th member at the end of July. We are truly delighted because it shows first of all that we are still attracting new members, even after 15 years, and that we can build on a solid foundation of trust for our work as a cluster agency. Secondly, if that weren’t enough, the 300th member proves the wide variety of topics we continue to address. greentech corporate solutions GmbH completes major solar and battery projects; the 16 members who joined at the same time also come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

We are proud of how positively our cluster agency is developing. In our 15th year, we look back at the evolution of our cluster network with thankfulness and joy. Starting with a network of 57 foundational members and a relatively strong focus on the local wind sector, we have since become an alliance for renewable energies with an extremely broad structure.

We are eager to see how the announced ‘stock taking’ of energy policy in the government nerve centre of Berlin will play out during the summer. In our renewable energy sector, we are confident that, despite shifts in focus, many of the fundamentals of renewable energies – including cost levels, roll-out speed and flexibility – continue to underpin the need for a committed expansion of renewables. Another weighty argument is the threat of the double-digit billions that will be required as compensation payments to ETS, the EU carbon certificate trading system, if Germany does not achieve its climate targets.