Residents are often skeptical when power lines are planned in the neighborhood. But without thousands of kilometers of new high-voltage lines, the green energy transition in Germany will not work. After all, the climate-friendly wind farms are often in the north and east of the republic – and the industrial centers that need the electricity, unfortunately, in the west and south. The federal government has therefore accelerated the tough approval procedures for the so-called electricity highways. It’s already paying off.
At least that’s what Hans-Jürgen Brick says. And he should know, because the CEO of the Amprion company is one of the masters of Germany’s electricity highways. “The acceleration initiated by the federal government is showing its first effects, so that we can implement important projects earlier than originally planned,” said Brick on Thursday at the presentation of the balance sheet from Amprion in Dortmund. The company is the second largest of four operators of the German high-voltage grids. The network of the former RWE subsidiary is 11,000 kilometers long and runs from the North Sea to the Alps in western Germany. The other three operator groups are 50 Hertz, Tennet and Transnet BW.
The federal government could buy Tennet
Brick gave examples of how the policy simplifications are having an impact. For example, two large lines that Amprion wants to use to transport electricity from wind farms in the North Sea should be able to go into operation two or three years earlier: namely in 2029 and 2030. The planning of an underground cable, i.e. an underground power line, between Lower Saxony and Hesse should change accelerate two years. Overall, the company with its 2,300 employees received permits for more than 200 kilometers of lines last year and has already completed 115 kilometers. Both are top marks.
The Dortmund group, three quarters of which is owned by insurers and one quarter by RWE, invested more than ever before in the expansion and conversion of the network in 2022: 1.5 billion euros. In the current year it should even be 2.8 billion euros. By 2027, company boss Brick wants to spend a good twelve billion euros on lines on land and ten billion euros on connections at sea. “A new phase of the energy transition is beginning, in which we are increasingly moving from planning to implementation,” he says.
After 2027, huge investments will continue. In March, Amprion and the three other operators of the electricity highways published an overviewwhich lines will be needed by 2045 for the transition to a climate-friendly energy supply. The quartet estimates that 5,700 kilometers of lines will be needed on land and 8,500 kilometers at sea. The new projects are expected to cost a total of 128 billion euros. Part of the investment could end up being borne by taxpayers. Finally, the federal government is negotiating with the Dutch government about the German Buy Tennet net. Tennet is a Dutch state company and also the largest German network operator.