display

After the dramatic slump in wind power expansion in 2019, significantly more wind turbines were installed again in 2020.

Despite the restrictions of the corona pandemic, the increase in electrical output from newly installed systems was 46 percent above the previous year.

According to the annual balance sheet presented by the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) together with the Association of German Mechanical and Plant Engineering (VDMA), 420 systems with an output of 1,431 megawatts were built last year.

The number of building permits issued that year almost doubled to a total of 3300 megawatts.

"The trend," said Matthias Zelinger, Managing Director of the VDMA Power Systems division, "has been surprisingly stable in the right direction."

More about the energy transition

display

It is noteworthy that the wind power industry in Germany has recovered, although the new EEG 2021 funding law was not yet in force.

The construction of a new wind turbine had previously slumped to an all-time low in 2019 - that year, the bottom line was only 243 turbines with an output of 981 megawatts.

The green electricity industry, in cooperation with climate protection organizations, therefore lobbied for a kind of emergency law, which only came into force on January 1, 2021.

In this amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act, planning procedures were accelerated and, for example, the development of low-wind locations made financially more attractive and the funding of old systems extended.

The new funding law may not even have been necessary

display

Profit sharing for municipalities should ease local resistance.

Temporarily - the passage was deleted again after protests - the draft of the EEG 2021 even provided for the expansion of wind power to be a question of “public safety”.

Now the strong expansion figures in the middle of the Corona year show that the wind power industry may not have needed the new subsidy law at all in order to bottom out.

In fact, the deep slump in wind power in 2019 can also be explained differently: In 2018, the federal government linked construction activity to an auction process in which only the most cost-effective project developers are involved.

Source: Getty;

Infographic WORLD

display

The process reduced the energy transition costs for consumers and at the same time the profits of wind power companies.

That is why there were considerable pull-forward effects in 2016 and 2017 in order to still be able to build under the old, lucrative funding conditions.

In these two years, new wind power plants achieved some of their historically highest growth rates of over 4500 and 5200 megawatts.

The fact that the project pipeline was empty for the time being and that the new building almost came to a standstill in the following year 2019 is hardly surprising.

But the climate protection and green electricity lobby succeeded in making politicians responsible for the alleged “failure” in the expansion of wind power that year - and thus persuaded them to make far-reaching concessions in the EEG 2021.

Source: WORLD infographic

However, the fact that the expansion figures increased before the new funding law came into force, in retrospect, devalues ​​its necessity to a certain extent.

The upswing should ultimately continue: The VDMA is anticipating an expansion of up to 2500 megawatts gross this year.

"We believe that the German market is back," said Zelinger: "But we need more expansion."

According to the interpretation of the industry associations, the low expansion figures in 2019 are only due to a small extent to the pull-forward effect, rather it is about legal and political blockades.

“The central point for competition in the tenders as well as for the necessary significant increase in new construction remain the provision of areas and the approval of projects,” said Hermann Albers, President of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE).

"All measures that lead to more projects must be given priority."

Measured against the legal status quo, the expansion of wind power is no longer far from a sufficient pace.

display

According to the specifications of the currently valid EEG 2021, the wind power capacity is to be increased from the current 55,000 megawatts to 71,000 megawatts by 2030.

With a net increase of a manageable 1600 megawatts per year, the target has already been reached.

Almost 30,000 wind turbines are currently rotating on the mainland

However, associations and climate politicians are pushing for a significantly accelerated expansion.

Behind this is also the fear that too many old systems will be demolished in the coming years that will reach the end of their 20-year funding period.

In addition to the net expansion desired by climate policy, these old systems that are no longer needed would first have to be replaced.

Almost 30,000 wind turbines are currently rotating on the mainland.

In addition, the European Union recently raised its CO2 savings target by 2030 to the German level of 55 percent reduction.

This in turn requires Germany to increase its own climate protection ambitions above the new EU level, argue climate protectionists and environmental associations.

The expansion targets for renewable energies should also be set correspondingly higher.

Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts

We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.

We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.

Activate social networks

I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.

This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.

This may require the storage of cookies on your device.

More information can be found here.

“Everything on shares” is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team.

Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz.

For stock market experts and beginners.

Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Deezer.

Or directly via RSS feed.

While the Federal Ministry of Economics so far considers 71,000 megawatts of wind power to be sufficient by the end of the decade, Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) is already advocating a target of 95,000 megawatts.

Another EEG amendment this spring is supposed to fix the new value.

A tripling or quadrupling of the pace of expansion of wind energy beyond the current level is also called for by environmental associations and climate protectionists, because they assume that the demand for electricity will increase significantly by 2030.

Because e-mobility and hydrogen production require large amounts of electricity, some forecasts assume a total requirement of 750 or more terawatt hours per year.

The Federal Ministry of Economics, however, believes that electricity demand will not be so far removed from the current 520 terawatt hours by 2030, because the additional demand will be offset by efficiency increases.

The expansion of renewable energies is to be accelerated

The Bundestag passed the reform of the Renewable Energy Sources Act on Thursday.

The changes are intended to accelerate the expansion of electricity from wind and solar energy.

Source: WELT / Eybe Ahlers