It sounds like a cheer, but it’s not. “We are already at the level of 2019,” says Anna-Kathrin Wallasch when the film with the bars finally appears on the screens. Wallasch works for the consulting firm Deutsche Windguard, it collects the figures for the expansion of wind power. And if as many new wind turbines have been installed after half a year in 2021 as after a full year in 2019 – that’s something. If 2019 hadn’t been so terribly weak for the industry.
On Tuesday the German wind lobby presented its half-year balance sheet, it should at least mark a turnaround. Wind turbines with a total output of 971 megawatts were installed on land in the first six months, 62 percent more than in Corona spring 2020. “We have bottomed out,” says Hermann Albers, President of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE). And that after four years “which weren’t easy”. For the year as a whole, BWE and the mechanical engineering association VDMA are now expecting between 2.2 and 2.4 gigawatts of new wind power. That corresponds to between 550 and 600 new wind turbines – at least for the large systems that are now common.
Only: none of that is enough. At the end of July, wind turbines with a total output of almost 56 gigawatts were connected to the grid in Germany. In order to make the republic actually climate-neutral by 2045, according to experts, wind turbines with 80 gigawatts of output would have to be on land alone by 2030, and another 25 gigawatts at sea. If there are fewer wind farms in the North and Baltic Seas, more on land will be required accordingly.
Many wind turbines are getting on in years and have to be dismantled
The matter is made more difficult by the fact that thousands of wind turbines are getting old at the same time. In the first half of the year alone, 135 mostly smaller systems were dismantled across Germany. This also frees up locations for larger systems. But the bottom line is that the expansion will shrink to 831 megawatts. So it is all the more necessary to build new ones to actually achieve 80 gigawatts of wind power by 2030. The Berlin think tank Agora Energiewende is also assuming an average of five gigawatts that will have to be newly built every year – more than twice as much as has been estimated for this year. “And we also have to make up for the lost years,” says Agora-Energiewende boss Patrick Graichen. If none of this succeeds, the beautiful German climate and energy targets will be a long way off. “In fact, we need two percent of the country’s area for wind energy, and that also in countries like Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia,” says Graichen. The Union must understand this at the latest in coalition negotiations. “Otherwise there will be a rude awakening.”
After all, renewable electricity is to be used in more and more places in the future: in a growing number of electric cars, in electric heat pumps in buildings, and after conversion into “green” hydrogen, also in heavy-duty or air traffic. Only recently, Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) had to raise the forecast for German electricity consumption in 2030 by ten percent, to 655 terawatt hours. Correspondingly more wind turbines and solar parks will be necessary in order to achieve a green electricity share of 65 percent by then. That is currently the official goal. “We need significantly more renewable energies and we need a faster expansion pace so that we can achieve our ambitious climate targets,” says Altmaier himself. He reckons that “we will have to increase the expansion of renewable energies by up to a third again.” .
“Anyone who says climate protection must also build wind turbines.”
In contrast, the Greens accuse the Union in particular of having delayed the expansion of renewable energies. The CDU and CSU have “vehemently” blocked the expansion, for example through minimum clearances in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia, criticizes Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock. “Anyone who says climate protection must also build wind turbines.”
At least economically, the conditions for this are not bad. “Wind power is currently paying off, also in view of the high prices in emissions trading,” says energy economist Andreas Löschel, head of the expert commission for assessing the energy transition. That makes wind power cheaper than coal power. “What is missing, however, is long-term reliability.” Often there was a lack of space and the approval process would be protracted. And finally, wind turbines still met with reservations in many places. “You have to take people at their word,” says Löschel, after all, everyone currently wants more climate protection. “And you have to be clear: it won’t work if the expansion stops.”