climate policy
The traffic light government is apparently making little progress on the use of wind energy
Wind turbines in Brandenburg
© AFP
Actually, the faster expansion of renewable energies is a core goal of the traffic light government. However, not much progress is being made in the use of wind energy. The opposition criticizes the “expansion at a snail’s pace”.
According to a report, the federal traffic light government did not significantly increase the use of wind energy in Germany in its first year in office. This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Economics to a request from the left-wing faction, the editorial network Germany reported on Friday. According to this, the Federal Network Agency recorded an increase of only 264 onshore wind turbines at the end of 2022 compared to the previous year, while the grand coalition added 274 turbines last year.
In the years 2016 and 2017, the stock had grown by more than 1,300 wind turbines a year on land, in 2018 by 726 systems, according to the report. According to the information, 33 wind turbines were added on the high seas last year, and no net additional systems went into operation in the previous year.
In total, there were around 29,000 wind turbines in Germany at the end of 2022 with an installed capacity of 58 gigawatts on land and 1,532 at sea – these had an output of around 8.1 gigawatts. So the total output was about 66 gigawatts.
The chairman of the left in the Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, spoke of a “wind power expansion at a snail’s pace”. “The traffic light is stagnating at Groko level,” he told RND. “So far, the words about ‘faster expansion of renewable energies’ have been empty phrases.” If you compare the current expansion with 2018, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck from the Greens is even slower than his predecessor Peter Altmaier (CDU), criticized the left-wing faction leader, who had asked the Ministry of Economics.
Expansion of wind energy: Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg bring up the rear
According to the ministry’s reply, among the non-city states, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in particular were particularly slow in expanding wind power last year. In the two southern countries, only 24 of a total of 505 wind turbines nationwide were newly built in 2022.
The difference to the net increase in wind power is caused by wind turbines that are switched off. According to the RND, the Federal Network Agency reported the most new buildings in Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, each with more than 80 new wind turbines, and Schleswig-Holstein with 117 new systems.
The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) are “the wind power blockers of the republic”, criticized Bartsch. “Not even five percent of the new plants put into operation in 2022 are in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.” The federal government must now “finally get going on the expansion of wind power and oblige the south to do significantly more”.