To achieve more climate protection, emissions of the climate-damaging greenhouse gas CO2 must continue to be significantly reduced. But a lot of energy is still produced from fossil fuels. The energy transition is intended to change that. Renewable energies such as wind and water power are to increasingly take over the role of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear energy. In the meantime, well over 40 percent of the electricity in Germany comes from wind, sun, water or biomass. Without jeopardizing the international competitiveness of the industrial location, the German government wants to make the energy turnaround the engine for energy efficiency, modernization, innovation and digitization.

The mechanical and plant engineering sector is ready to supply the appropriate efficient solutions.
In this context, however, energy is much more than just electricity, so the energy turnaround must also reach completely different sectors. We need to think about heating and cooling buildings, for example, or about transportation and traffic. There, too, fossil fuels such as gasoline, heating oil and diesel are to be gradually replaced by renewable energies. In particular, sector coupling will contribute to this: electricity, heat, transport and industry will be considered holistically and coupled together, and "green" electricity will be used everywhere to reduce the use of fossil energies ever further.

Power-to-X, or P2X for short, is in the spotlight as a key component of the energy transition and sector coupling. With P2X, green electricity from solar and wind power plants can be stored efficiently and over a long period of time. As a driver of the energy transition, mechanical and plant engineering provides the solutions here: Components for power-to-X technology - from the "power" (e.g. wind energy, solar energy, hydropower) to the "X" (process technology) to the application, for example in mobile machines or in ship engines. The potential is immense, the applications are promising. And Germany and Europe are at the technological forefront.

"From a technical point of view, power-to-X is anything but pie in the sky," says Dr. Martin Teigeler, Executive Vice President R&D Rolls-Royce Power Systems and board member of the VDMA AG Power-to-X for Applications. "It is now a matter of quickly finding practical applications with P2X, scaling them and developing markets. The mechanical engineering sector is ready for this." However, the power and raw materials generated by P2X are still too expensive - because, conversely, CO2 emissions are too cheap. But a sufficiently high CO2 price can make avoiding CO2 emissions economically attractive in the future. Then the mechanical engineering sector can fully exploit the advantages of P2X power and raw materials, because they can be used immediately in traditional applications or fed into existing grids.

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