Far- right AfD threatens east­ern Ger­many's energy trans­ition

Hannes Loth drives an elec­tric car and wants to install wind tur­bines in his muni­cip­al­ity.

Loth, Ger­many's first full-time mayor from the far-right, pop­u­list Altern­at­ive for Ger­many ( AfD), is pro­mot­ing the expan­sion of renew­able energy - even though it runs counter to his party's plat­form.

The farmer has been mayor of Raguhn- Jeßnitz since 2023 and has ambi­tious plans. In the town of around 8,600 people in the east­ern Ger­man state of Sax­onyAn­halt, he wants to build a bat­tery stor­age facil­ity with a sub­sta­tion, and six new wind tur­bines.

Tilo Hörtzsch, a local coun­cilor for the con­ser­vat­ive Chris­tian Demo­cratic Union ( CDU) in Raguhn- Jeßnitz, con­firmed the plans. "Mr. Loth isn't someone who brings ideo­logy into everything," the owner of a local elec­trical engin­eer­ing com­pany told DW. "We need these key tech­no­lo­gies in Sax­onyAn­halt - they're import­ant."

Fears of a policy reversal

With the AfD's polling num­bers rising ahead of the state elec­tion in Sax­onyAn­halt on Septem­ber 6, Hörtzsch fears the state could reverse course polit­ic­ally.

"I'm wor­ried we could end up tak­ing a step back­wards," he said.

His con­cerns are not unfoun­ded. In its elec­tion mani­festo for Sax­onyAn­halt, the AfD pledges to "halt the coal phase- out, ini­ti­ate a return to nuc­lear power and end energyre­lated sanc­tions against Rus­sia." It also wants to impose a morator­ium on new wind tur­bines and a halt to the admis­sion of non- EU nation­als.

Accord­ing to the latest opin­ion polls, the AfD - led by its top can­did­ate Ulrich Siegmund - is polling at around 41% in Sax­onyAn­halt. The CDU's can­did­ate, incum­bent state premier Sven Schulze, is on around 26%, accord­ing to infratest dimap, a polling insti­tute.

Sax­onyAn­halt is one of Ger­many's pion­eers in the trans­ition to renew­able energy. Thanks to its extens­ive wind and solar power capa­city, renew­able sources accoun­ted for 57% of the state's gross elec­tri­city con­sump­tion in 2025, accord­ing to the Ger­man Envir­on­ment Agency. By com­par­ison, the nation­wide fig­ure was 55%.

Wind power faces polit­ical head­winds

It's something of a para­dox: The east­ern Ger­man states of Sax­onyAn­halt, Branden­burg and Mecklen­bur­gVor­pom­mern are among the coun­try's lead­ers in expand­ing renew­able energy, yet they are also where the AfD has made sig­ni­fic­ant elect­oral gains.

For poll­ster Roland Abold, man­aging dir­ector of infratest dimap, eco­nomic issues such as the state's energy mix "play a rel­at­ively minor role in the vot­ing decisions of AfD sup­port­ers in Sax­onyAn­halt."

"Accord­ing to our latest sur­vey from May 2026, the issues voters in Sax­onyAn­halt con­sider most import­ant are refugees and asylum policy, fol­lowed by edu­ca­tion and the eco­nomy," he told DW.

Johannes Kieß, a researcher spe­cial­ising in right- wing extrem­ism at Leipzig Uni­versity, offers another explan­a­tion.

"When it comes to energy policy, the AfD's elect­oral suc­cess is not driven by con­struct­ive or innov­at­ive policy pro­pos­als," he said. Instead, he argues, the party's appeal is built on emo­tion, mobil­ising resent­ment dir­ec­ted both at "those at the top" - the polit­ical estab­lish­ment - and "those at the bot­tom" - per­ceived out­siders.

Coal instead of wind power

The pic­ture is dif­fer­ent when it comes to the eco­nomy. Busi­nesses say their biggest chal­lenges are the short­age of skilled work­ers and high energy prices.

While Sax­onyAn­halt's coali­tion gov­ern­ment of the CDU and the Social Demo­crats ( SPD) is bet­ting on expand­ing renew­able energy to reduce depend­ence on fossil fuels and volat­ile energy prices, the AfD is back­ing fossil fuels instead.

Busi­ness lead­ers and eco­nom­ists have there­fore cau­tioned against the AfD enter­ing gov­ern­ment.

For Daniel Han­nemann, chief exec­ut­ive of bat­tery stor­age man­u­fac­turer Tes­volt, based in the east­ern Ger­man town of Wit­ten­berg, the party's migra­tion policy is "eco­nom­ic­ally dam­aging." He recently told the news­pa­per Volkss­timme that "a cli­mate of isol­a­tion" would make it harder to recruit staff and main­tain inter­na­tional busi­ness rela­tion­ships.

In his view, however, the party's energy policy pro­pos­als would be even more dam­aging.

"Any­one who slows the expan­sion of wind power, ques­tions the legal sup­port frame­work for renew­able energy or seeks to roll back cli­mate com­mit­ments is dir­ectly harm­ing com­pan­ies like Tes­volt," Han­nemann said.

Dam­age to the eco­nomy?

Accord­ing to right- wing extrem­ism researcher Kieß, the AfD's pro­gram is not only "unreal­istic," but it would also "have severe neg­at­ive con­sequences for Sax­onyAn­halt's eco­nomy and energy secur­ity," he told DW in a state­ment.

At a state par­lia­ment ses­sion in late June, State Premier Schulze took aim at his elec­tion rival, Ulrich Siegmund. He argued that many of the AfD's cam­paign prom­ises con­cerned issues that could not be decided at the state level.

"Scrap­ping the CO2 tax and sub­sidies for elec­tric cars, with­draw­ing from the Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment, or bring­ing back nuc­lear power - if you want to achieve that through the Bundes­rat ( upper house of par­lia­ment), you need 35 votes. Sax­onyAn­halt has four."

Mean­while, AfD mayor Hannes Loth is try­ing to secure state approval for the con­struc­tion of wind tur­bines in his muni­cip­al­ity before it may be too late. Under Sax­onyAn­halt's rules, muni­cip­al­it­ies receive € 0.3 ($ 0.34) per kilo­wat­thour gen­er­ated by approved wind farms.

Loth's request for approval landed on Schulze's desk. "At first I thought it was a joke," Schulze told the state par­lia­ment. "But the let­ter in which Mr. Loth asks me to sup­port his plan to build six new wind tur­bines in his forest really does exist. I have it right here in front of me."

This piece was ori­gin­ally pub­lished in Ger­man.