Skilled workers shortage
Construction expert: Expansion of renewables difficult to implement
In the future, solar roofs will become the norm in private new buildings. Photo: Jan Woitas / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
By 2030, Germany is to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewable energies. Construction expert Lamia Messari-Becker considers such plans to be unrealistic. Above all, there is a lack of skilled workers.
The construction expert Lamia Messari-Becker considers the plans of the traffic light parties to expand renewable energies in the building sector to be difficult to implement.
A central hurdle is the shortage of skilled workers, said Messari-Becker of the German press agency. “Thousands of new solar roofs and wind turbines are already facing a lack of capacity and a blatant shortage of skilled workers in the construction industry,” warned the construction engineer, who has been advising the federal government on the construction sector for years. The construction industry is “out of date”, and many skilled workers have retired in recent years. The expert warns that the ecological change in the building sector will not succeed without long-term investment in personnel.
Ambitious traffic light plans
The new coalition partners of the SPD, Greens and FDP are planning an expansion offensive for wind and solar energy. According to the coalition agreement, Germany should obtain 80 percent of its electricity from renewable energies by the end of the decade. The building sector should also become significantly greener – among other things, because solar roofs will become the norm for private new buildings in the future.
Here the expert warns against bad investments and advocates only investing in solar systems “where it pays off”. A photovoltaic roof is “neither possible everywhere, nor useful everywhere,” she points out. “Flat-rate solutions with the watering can only cost taxpayers money unnecessarily.”