Despite all statements to the contrary by Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (FW), the expansion of wind power in Bavaria made little progress in the first half of 2023. This is shown by a response from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to a request from the Greens member of the state parliament, Martin Stümpfig. According to this, only six new wind turbines were put into operation in Bavaria between January and June of this year. In the comparative period of 2013 – i.e. immediately before the brief expansion boom in Bavaria – there were 20 systems, more than three times as many. The discrepancy in the approvals for wind turbines is even greater. Their number was four in the first six months of 2023. In the same period of 2013, there were 72 pieces.
Stümpfig’s verdict is also devastating: “The new figures from the Ministry of Economic Affairs clearly show that the damage caused by 10H is still immense,” says the Green politician. 10H is the distance rule, according to which a new wind turbine must be ten times its height away from the nearest town. With it, the state government wanted to meet the critics of wind power. In fact, it blocked the expansion for ten years. Only after massive pressure from the Green Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck did she allow exceptions to this. According to federal guidelines, the Free State must make 1.1 percent of the state area available for wind turbines by 2027. By 2032 it must be 1.8 percent.
The standstill will continue for a while. It takes at least a year for the building permit for a wind turbine to be issued, usually up to three years. The start of construction of the 23 wind turbines, for which the building applications were received by the respective district offices in the first six months of 2023, can be expected between 2024 and 2026 – if they are all approved. This means that the Free State will not be able to match the figures from ten years ago in the near future: From January to June 2013, 135 applications for new wind turbines were submitted to the district authorities across Bavaria.
The Green MP Martin Stümpfig during a speech in the state parliament.
(Photo: Matthias Balk/dpa)
These 135 building applications were part of the expansion boom in the following years. In 2014, the year in which the 10-H rule came into force, 161 wind turbines were connected to the grid, compared to 141 in 2015. This boom continued in 2016 (106 turbines) and 2017 (111 turbines). It was only in 2018 that the 10-H rule blocked expansion. This year, the number of new systems dropped to eight in one fell swoop. “Since then, only an average of nine wind turbines per year have been put into operation,” says Stümpfig. “That’s a 15-fold drop from what it was before 10H.”
In contrast to the national comparison, wind power will therefore hardly play a role in the Bavarian electricity mix for a long time to come. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, it only covered 4.8 percent of electricity consumption in Bavaria in 2021. With an installed output of just 35 kilowatts per square kilometer of land area, the Free State brought up the rear in a national comparison. In Germany, on the other hand, wind power accounted for the second largest share of electricity generation with a share of 22 percent.