World outlook
1980 The term
‘Energiewende’ is coined in a publication by the Öko-Institut, calling for the complete abandonment of nuclear and petroleum energy.
September 2010
The German government under Angela Merkel
publish the key policy document outlining the Energiewende.
facility near Düsseldorf. That’s echoed by frantic offshore activity: Germany’s maritime and hydrographic agency – the BSH – recently approved three North Sea sites that could create 1.9GW of energy. Just as well: with plans to generate 80% of the country’s electricity sustainably by 2030, Germany’s politicians need all the growth they can get. How, though, to explain this rush back to turbines and wind? Obviously, the conflict on Europe’s eastern edge has helped focus minds – and indeed has led to even more dramatic green goals. But as Podewils emphasises, clean and sustainable power were key to the government’s plans even earlier. “Before the Ukraine war, they wanted to nearly double the installed capacity of wind onshore by 2030, and more than triple wind offshore.” It all stems back to politics. With Merkel finally stepping down, and her ruling Christian Democrats replaced by a three-way coalition of social democrats, liberals and greens, Germany’s new rulers are congenitally more sympathetic to wind farms than their right-wing rivals. But beyond the headline figures of schemes like Bartelsdorf 2, how does this so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition (so named for the red, yellow and green colours of its members) plan to achieve this sustainable tomorrow? One important area involves changing the planning laws. For starters, Winkler explains how ministers hope to speed up approval for farms, perhaps by hiring more staff to review applications. From there, she continues, it aims to tender more capacity for new projects. That is of a piece, suggests Podewils, with how politicians are starting to think about wind farms more broadly. “It will declare renewable energy projects as projects of national public interest,” he says, describing a system whereby all German municipalities will soon be expected to dedicate 2% of their territory to wind power. Not that local doubts will necessarily be bulldozed – if a town can convince a neighbouring municipality to use 4% of its land for wind farms, they’re absolved of responsibility at home.
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com Hacking it
That last point is important. For if the politicians in Berlin are increasingly excited about the vast potential of wind farms on land and sea, many outside the capital clearly are not. That’s especially true in Germany’s rich and conservative south. In one interview, an anti-turbine activist recently described wind energy as “schmarrn”, meaning ‘nonsense’ in his Bavarian dialect. It goes without saying that the flexibility of the 2% rule could go some way towards softening these concerns. But even more fundamentally, Podewils claims that the German public is gradually becoming more sympathetic to turbines. Between the Nord Stream 2 fiasco and the shock of recent floods that killed 196, he says that in comparison the impact of wind farms is “negligible”. That’s reflected by the statistics: according to one 2021 survey, 88.5% of Germans now support their country’s energy transition. Not that the path ahead is completely smooth. Both Podewils and Winkler emphasise that as wind farms sprout up like potatoes, the sector will become more and more vulnerable to malicious cyber onslaughts. Almost simultaneously with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of satellites, crucial for the smooth running of thousands of central European wind turbines, all went offline at once. And though Moscow’s involvement in the affair has not been proved, it does seem likely that as the economic battle between Russia and the West deepens, similar disruption seems likely. Yet, though she’s clearly conscious of the threat, Winkler is adamant that the wind industry is partnering closely with officials and IT experts to “work on” these issues. Podewils agrees, noting that using different frequency bands could help keep turbines secure. Given how much Germany’s tricolour government has resting on wind – to say nothing of how often the country’s political class has stumbled into energy U-turns – we have to hope they’ll listen. ●
11 March 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster occurs in Japan, turning a large part of German public opinion against nuclear energy.
2016–18
Progress on the Energiewende slows down.
March 2019
Chancellor Merkel forms a ‘climate cabinet’ to find a consensus on new emissions reduction measures to meet 2030 targets.
9 October
2019 Germany adopts the Climate Action Programme 2030.
November 2021
Germany’s new ‘traffic light’ coalition agrees to boost offshore wind capacity targets for 2030 by 50% to 30GW.
31 December 2022
The last nuclear power plant in Germany is due to shut down.
2038
All existing German coal-fired generation will be retired.
13
WindMW Service
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45