Germany has exactly one chance not to be left behind — and that chance is free electricity. While other countries are already investing in the future, Germany is still arguing about electricity prices. Yet the debate is no longer about price; it is about understanding energy itself.

Understanding Energy Means Understanding Conversion

We do not produce energy — we convert it. Energy does not disappear; it merely changes form. What matters is the efficiency of that conversion. We must recognize: energy is never “generated”; it is transformed — and we have learned to shorten this process.

Instead of storing solar energy for millions of years in biomass, coal, and oil only to burn it again, we now use sun, wind, tides, and geothermal energy directly. We bypass the fossil detour and tap the original energy sources immediately. We believe that vast areas of land are needed to replace fossil fuels — maybe even satellites in space — but in reality, only very little land is required to replace fossil energy sources.

Our conversion devices — whether solar cells, turbines, or fuel systems — are becoming more efficient and more affordable. As we scale up, the price per kilowatt-hour drops, not because of subsidies, but because of technology and mass production.

The New Energy System: Abundance as Strategy

We already have a practical fusion reactor in the sky — the sun. We don’t have to do anything; it simply works. The sun provides more energy in one hour than humanity consumes in an entire year. When energy is abundant, it must not be restricted — it must be used. Negative prices are not an error; they are a sign of maturity.

When my father charged his new electric car every Sunday with negative electricity prices in Norway between April and September last year, he benefited from a Scandinavian “field office” — Schleswig-Holstein. Where too much renewable energy is produced, the grid must be relieved because industry rests on weekends and old infrastructure still has to be maintained. Citizens in Germany pay €7 billion every year for redispatch measures. In short: we already produce too much renewable energy — but we cannot store it, and we cling to old grids and outdated technologies. Citizens complain — without understanding. Corporations cling — without seeing opportunity or tomorrow. But the future is coming.

Abundance requires storage. Instead of betting on individual technologies, we must understand that storage innovation is a continuous process, driven by scaling, automation, and falling unit costs — just like in the semiconductor and solar industries. More production leads to lower storage prices, which in turn fuels more production — a flywheel effect.

The greatest storage revolution is already approaching: the electrification of mobility. It is inevitable. Electric vehicles are no longer consumers but active participants in the energy system. Cars already contain hundreds of kilowatt-hours of storage — multiplied by the global fleet, this becomes an unimaginable storage volume. These batteries will not only be used in vehicles, but also later, in second-life applications, as part of the energy system. And even during the vehicle’s lifetime, through bidirectional charging, they can feed energy back into the grid. Mobility itself becomes one of humanity’s largest storage systems.

Compared to the systems now entering production, this is already old technology — the scale ahead of us is enormous.

Capex Instead of Opex – The End of the Electricity Bill

The bottleneck is not a lack of energy but a lack of imagination. We treat every kilowatt-hour as a burden instead of liberation. But energy is not a consumable — it is infrastructure, the foundation of a new era.

This is not about upgrading existing grids or about digital transformation or even about an “energy transition”; it is about a transition of thought. Energy costs will become capex instead of opex — with grids, operators, and markets looking very different from today.

We must understand this — and endure it. Perhaps the dinosaurs of an old era will have to step aside. But one thing is clear: we must invest once to benefit for decades. This is not a technical detail but a paradigm shift. Energy must no longer be a cost point but capital — a lever for progress and freedom. The key insight: once conversion costs fall low enough, the only remaining fixed costs are interest and depreciation. Energy itself costs nothing — only the devices that convert and store it.

Decentralization Is Stability

The conversion and storage of energy must not remain separate sectors. The more decentralized our energy conversion becomes, the lower the grid costs and the more stable the entire system. The energy system of the future is interconnected, local, and coupled — with intelligent storage that takes in electricity when it’s available and releases it when needed.

The coupling of conversion, storage, and use is the true infrastructure revolution. Energy will no longer be transported across long distances but converted and used where it arises.

Energy as a Public Good

We must rethink energy — not as a commodity, but as a given. What if every person, at birth, had a claim to an annual energy allowance — a basic right to electricity, supplied by shared infrastructure?

Just as roads, education, or healthcare are enabled through public investment, energy too can become a collectively funded public infrastructure. And thanks to the flywheel effect that energy-as-infrastructure creates, financing is not the problem — it is the smallest part of the challenge.

China is building gigantic solar and wind parks, India is digitizing its grids, Australia is storing energy on the terawatt scale, and Scandinavia is networking smart systems with storage intelligence. Everywhere, the energy surplus of the future is being built — technological systems in which marginal costs approach zero.

Germany, meanwhile, remains stuck in managing scarcity. We debate subsidies, cap prices, curtail surpluses. We pay to get rid of electricity instead of using it. We fight abundance — the symbol of a system living in the past.

From a Cost State to a Creative State

Germany has a historic chance — or rather, it has one remaining chance. We must become the first industrial nation with free electricity. Not through subsidies, but through a system that enables abundance and integrates scarcity.

Energy must not be a price competition but a project of design. Free electricity may soon be a major competitive advantage; in 15 years, it will be the basis of economic survival. The era of managing electricity is ending — Germany must now imagine futures.

Does this require courage? Yes, certainly. But far more, it requires understanding. Artificial intelligence will accelerate everything — but the greatest risk lies in natural stupidity, in our inability to anticipate our own future. Today’s investment is tomorrow’s prosperity. Free electricity is not a utopian dream but Germany’s last real chance to reinvent its industrial leadership.