Wind energy in crisis - Part 1: Expansion is stalling in Germany

The German wind power industry has to accept setback after setback. Hardly any new turbines are being built, and more and more old wind turbines are being phased out. Now wind energy lobbyists are calling for the rules for new buildings to be relaxed.

In the Free State of Bavaria there is almost nothing going on when it comes to wind power. According to a report by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, the expansion has been almost zero for several years. The share of wind energy in electricity production is now even declining. "Wind power is dead in Bavaria" "complained the Green politician Martin Stümpfig.

The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder had promised in 2019 to have a hundred new wind turbines installed in the state forests. But according to the Ministry of Economics, not a single application for such a wind turbine has yet been received. The Greens are calling for the so-called 10H rule to be abolished, according to which the distance between new wind turbines and the next residential area must be ten times the height of the system. Modern wind turbines are 200 meters high, which requires a distance of two kilometers. That makes many projects impossible.

The installed wind energy capacity in Germany has barely increased recently. Source: Windguard

The expansion of wind energy has stalled nationwide as well. In 2016, 4625 megawatts (MW) of new wind power capacities were installed in Germany, and in 2017 even 5334 MW. That corresponds to four to five large coal-fired power plants. In 2018, the expansion fell to 2402 MW, in 2019 even to just 1078 MW. Last year, too, the newly installed capacity of 1431 MW was well below the federal government's target of 2800 MW of new wind power capacity per year (see graphic).

Enormous resistance from the population

Lengthy planning and approval procedures stand in the way of the expansion of wind energy. There is too little designated space for possible locations and too many lawsuits against projects. The resistance to the construction of wind turbines is enormous in many places. Countless nature conservation groups and citizens' groups see the landscape impaired, health threatened or rare birds in danger and are fighting with all possible means against new wind turbines. The political leaders of municipalities and states are also often against easing the elimination of wind power locations.

To make matters worse for the future of wind energy is the fact that many systems are threatened with shutdown. The German Renewable Energy Sources Act, which has been in force since 2000, guarantees wind turbine operators secure remuneration for twenty years. This deadline will expire in the next few years for thousands of systems. Then they are no longer profitable. By 2025, there is a risk of 15,000 MW of power being lost, which corresponds to over a quarter of the wind power installed on land in Germany.

Technically, it would still be possible to continue operation after 20 years. But without guaranteed compensation, many plant operators find it difficult to assert themselves in the market. At the current low price level for electricity, they are hardly competitive. There are already appeals to the federal government to provide financial means to keep the plants running.

"We are heading for a disaster"

There are a particularly large number of wind turbines in the state of Lower Saxony. Olaf Lies, the Minister of Energy and Environment, has had the extent to which wind power capacities in Lower Saxony can be taken off the grid without replacement because the feed-in tariff for electricity ends after 20 years of operation. By 2025 there will be around 3500 wind turbines with a total output of 4300 MW. "We are heading for a disaster," said Lies to the "Handelsblatt".

He appealed to Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier to pay more attention to renewable energies. "If the federal government does not pull the rip cord, Germany faces a gigantic dismantling of wind energy with all the consequences for CO2-free electricity generation," said Lies. In particular, he wants to remove the hurdles for repowering. Repowering means replacing old systems with new, more powerful ones.

Today, this repowering often fails due to height restrictions for new systems, as well as due to species and immission protection requirements. "We are calling for a national repowering strategy that secures and maintains the urgently needed existing areas and simplifies and accelerates approvals for projects," said Hermann Albers, President of the Federal Wind Energy Association, to the "Handelsblatt".

In general, the wind power lobby is calling for the regulations for the construction of new plants to be relaxed. More zones are to be designated for wind turbines, including in the forest. The rules as to how far systems must be from the inhabited area are also under attack.

Fight for minimum distances

The government of the federal state of Hesse is planning to declare two percent of the area to be wind priority areas. That would have serious consequences for the last undisturbed forests and the landscape, according to the Hessian Association of Nature Conservation Initiative. Above all, the construction of wind turbines in the extensive Palatinate Forest means “another break of the taboo by the red-green-yellow coalition in favor of the wind power industry”.

In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a battle is raging over distance rules. A regulation envisaged by the state government provides for a minimum distance of one thousand meters to residential areas. The municipalities could, however, allow a smaller distance to wind turbines. Green politicians complain that the thousand meters are far too restrictive. According to the Greens, it is “foreseeable that many municipalities, under the pressure of a loud minority, will not want to go below the minimum distance to splintered settlements”. It remains to be seen whether the state government will give in. After all, it has announced that it intends to double the capacity of the installed wind turbines in North Rhine-Westphalia to 10,500 megawatts by 2030.

To make matters worse for the wind power industry, there are now also bad figures for electricity production. Because of a “low wind in spring”, the almost 30,000 German wind turbines generated almost a third less energy in the first quarter of 2021 than last year, the statistical office announced. The result was the lowest value since 2018. The gap was filled by higher electricity generation from coal and natural gas power plants. Critics of the energy transition, who warn of the fluctuating production of renewable energy, see themselves confirmed.

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