Ideology in the Official Journal

Energy generation has priority over species protection, according to a Hessian regulation. The Administrative Court has now established that it is "not binding on courts". A setback not just for two Green Ministers.

The expansion of wind power needed “a new boost”, demanded Mathias Wagner, the chairman of the Green parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament, at the beginning of the year. But the first attempt by the party supporters to expand the deployment of wind energy ended in failure. Under an administrative regulation jointly launched by Economy Minister Tarek Al-Wazir and Environment Minister Priska Hinz at the beginning of the year, the generation of energy would take priority over species protection. The Hessian Administrative Court has now soberly ruled that the decree has "no binding effect on the courts". This means that just a few weeks after the decree came into force it was deemed worthless. Ironically, the two Green politicians with the greatest experience in government lost in an unexpected way.

In order to make more wind turbines possible, the ministers sought to reduce the minimum distance between the turbine blades and nests of the red kite from 1500 to 1000 meters. This reduction in setback distance was viewed as drastic. In addition, the errors in the methodology used to justification the setback change were found to be so extreme that the judges ruled that the authors failed to correctly comply with scientific standards.

Methodical mistakes

The damning order is damaging to the Greens right now. In the environmental debate, science plays a much larger role than in most other topics. This is especially true in times when climate change is being denied. The fact that the so-called eco-party has been found by the highest court to have applied such serious technical and methodological errors weakens their arguments.

In the dispute about the construction of wind turbines on the Taunus ridge, for example, the question arises as to whether the project is endangering the groundwater. In such sensitive contexts, can one really rely on Green party cabinet members to present the facts competently and truthfully? The decree rejected by the Administrative Court only increases the existing doubts. It is detrimental to the reputation of the entire state government.

In their desperation over the inability of wind power to the expand further, the Greens have become more ideological in pushing their party's political goals instead of looking for a legally secure solution that is acceptable to all parties on the basis of well-founded knowledge. Instead, pure ideology has found its way into the official gazette unfiltered.

Translation into English using Google Translate