The new position paper on the energy transition comprises twenty-one pages, and the term “ICE plant” does not appear once in it. “The metropolitan region has not dealt with the issue in a dedicated manner and has not made any decisions in its committees either,” says Florian Janik, Erlangen’s mayor and deputy council chairman of the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (EMN). Nevertheless, there is a unanimous opinion. “It is absolutely clear that we need this ICE maintenance workshop in the metropolitan region, yes, we must have it,” says Janik. And the conflicts between the city of Nuremberg and parts of its surroundings, the protests by nature conservationists and residents of possible locations? According to Janik’s reading, it “wouldn’t have existed if the city of Nuremberg, Prime Minister Markus Söder and the railways hadn’t made serious mistakes”.
What bothers Janik: “They announced that the ICE plant was coming to Nuremberg and that it was really great. But then they deviated from it again and started to look for criteria that changed again later on to look for new locations. That wasn’t exactly confidence-inspiring.” Those who act in this way should not be surprised if citizens, but also local politicians, become suspicious, lose faith in an objective procedure and take to the streets against the ICE plant.
It is a remarkable broadside that Janik fires against the city, the Free State and the railways, because he does not do this in his capacity as Erlangen Mayor and also not on behalf of his party, the SPD. But as deputy chairman of the EMN organization that has so far kept out of the topic. They are proud of the metropolitan region in Franconia because, with its founding in 2005, it was possible for the first time to bundle the previously fragmented interests of 23 northern Bavarian administrative districts and eleven urban districts. So that from now on they “face the challenges together”, as it is said. Now climate protection and the energy and transport transition that has been recognized as necessary are undoubtedly a challenge. And the associated issue of the ICE plant is perhaps the metropolitan region’s first major test. Because old ditches threaten to reopen.
The locations in Nuremberg were quickly out of the running
If Nuremberg wants an ICE plant, then the city should also provide the necessary 45 hectares, say local politicians from the surrounding area, in the same tone as before 2005. Meanwhile, the Nuremberg city leaders, on the other hand, give the impression that they are quite right that the three remaining locations, with which the railway went into the spatial planning process these days, are all in the surrounding area; two near Feucht in the district of Nürnberger-Land and one in Harrlach near Allersberg in the district of Roth. Initially there were nine potential locations, but those in Nuremberg – one of them in the Fischbach/Altenfurt district and thus largely in Markus Söder’s voting area – were quickly eliminated after the residents there went on the barricades. This was political trust lost, says not only Florian Janik. As if the ecological conflict of goals revealed by the topic weren’t enough: Can tens of hectares of protected forest, which is important for the climate, be cleared in order to build an industrial plant that will undoubtedly also serve to protect the climate?
It doesn’t matter to Deutsche Bahn (DB) whether it builds the maintenance workshop, which is estimated at 400 million euros, in the city of Nuremberg or in the surrounding area. The main thing is that it has good rail connections to Nuremberg Central Station. As is well known, the railways want to expand their capacities with the Deutschlandtakt and send up to 600 long-distance trains through the republic. They have to be serviced, preferably at night and in plants like the one in or near Nuremberg. 450 collective bargaining jobs are to be created there, and the railway’s collective bargaining agreements are not considered the worst. “We need these jobs in the metropolitan region, and for that reason alone I don’t think it’s a good thing if action is taken against them,” says Klaus Wübbenhorst, spokesman for the economy in the metropolitan region, about the Deutsche Bahn project.
Fraas emphasizes the importance of logistics
The latest proposal by the Federal Nature Conservation Agency to leave the protective forest near Feucht and Harrlach and to place the ICE plant on the Nuremberg port area instead will be examined by the railway and the city of Nuremberg, according to the official statement. However, it seems that in view of the heated protests in Feucht and Harrlach, no one wants to be the bogeyman who removes the BN proposal from the table as unsuitable. The port operator vehemently dismisses it, and Nuremberg’s Economics Advisor Michael Fraas warns that it’s not just about a port, but about a sophisticated freight village (GVZ) that “has an important function for the internationally strongly networked and, with a quota of more than 50 percent, strong export economy of the metropolitan region of Nuremberg”. And also for the industrial city that Nuremberg is still. “An industrial site needs powerful and modern logistics,” says Fraas.
Reconciling industrial policy with climate protection will be a major challenge, and not only for the Nuremberg metropolitan region. The position paper mentioned above reveals how complex the tasks are. In it, Rainer Kleedörfer, manager of the energy supplier N-Ergie and technical spokesman for the climate protection forum in the metropolitan region, warns of impending bottlenecks in the power grid and the associated cost explosions. He advises that, for reasons of acceptance alone, citizens should get more involved in the expansion of renewable energy sources, that they take care of fair cost distribution, but also of technologies such as hydrogen or the expansion of district heating in good time. And even if the ICE plant is not explicitly mentioned, all districts and urban districts in the metropolitan region are “expressly committed to the energy transition and climate protection goals”.