She’s continuing the policy of her Green predecessor. Who was continuing a policy drawn up around the turn of the millennium by Fraunhofer: Balance renewables with gas peaker plants which then at one point can be weaned off fossil gas and switched over to synthetic gas. There’s other forms of grid storage, but Germany can store three months worth of total (!) energy consumption in its pipeline network so it’s ideal for long term, seasonal, storage.

Also see the deals Germany made with Namibia and Canada to supply green hydrogen (in the form of ammonia because easier to transport). Much of the German pipeline network is built to a standard that allows it to transport pure hydrogen (it started out as a hydrogen network) and re-declaring some pipes and building new ones is an ongoing process, there’s going to be a full separate network before long.

Why not batteries? First off, those were nowhere near ready when Fraunhofer drew up the plan, secondly, they still don’t have the same tradeoffs as synthesising fuel: They generally have higher round-trip efficiency, but also lose energy over time. Synthetic fuel is less efficient, but doesn’t lose appreciable amounts of energy over time and it’s much easier to store large amounts of it so that’s what you want for long-term storage.

Not to mention that we’ll need synthetic fuel for some applications anyway, e.g. catastrophe relief: You don’t want to rely on electric field kitchens when the grid is down. The current ones run on diesel, just as all the vehicles, and you don’t want to be in a situation where you can’t use that 70yold semi-mothballed Unimog. The reserves are deep and push come to shove, you want to field them.