For the energy transition and climate protection, Germany has to generate much more green electricity than before.

To do this, more wind turbines should be standing, rotating and reducing CO2 emissions in this country.

But the expansion is not progressing fast enough.

The industry complains that legal requirements and affected residents are preventing rapid progress.

After all, 240 new wind turbines with a combined output of around 970 megawatts were built on land in the first half of the year.

That is 62 percent more than in the same period of the previous year and even more than in 2019 as a whole. This is the result of an evaluation by Deutsche WindGuard, which the Bundesverband Windenergie (BWE) and VDMA Power Systems, a trade association of the Association of German Mechanical and Plant Engineering, carried out on Tuesday as a client.

Jan Hauser

Editor in business.

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However, plants are also being demolished.

Because 135 wind turbines with an output of 140 megawatts were shut down, the actual net expansion still comes to 831 megawatts.

In total, almost 30,000 wind turbines are now turning on land in Germany.

Growth lies behind the green electricity target

BWE President Hermann Albers sees this as positive.

“We have bottomed out,” he says.

However, they still have a rocky road ahead of them.

Procedures would have to be accelerated and land used more efficiently in order to achieve the climate targets in the European Union and Germany.

Because wind power falls short of political wishes. Matthias Zelinger, Managing Director of VDMA Power Systems, says that growth does not meet the goals of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) 2021 of almost 4,000 megawatts per year. With an expansion like in the first half of the year, new onshore wind turbines of around 2000 megawatts would be expected this year and thus only half would be achieved. The two associations expect around 2200 to 2400 megawatts for the year as a whole - if processes in the supply chains and during construction are not disrupted.

Zelinger also sees at least 5000 megawatts per year as a gross expansion target as necessary.

This will be necessary according to the German Climate Protection Act, which is supposed to reduce CO2 emissions in this country by 65 percent by 2030, and due to the new electricity consumption forecast by the Federal Ministry of Economics.

“The pace of land allocation and the dismantling of licensing barriers must now be greatly accelerated,” he says.

The two association representatives agree on this.

Albers and Zelinger wish the next federal government to set the course for the expansion of 6000 megawatts per year in the first 60 days.

With such a rush ahead, the dent in the extension from 2018 to the coming year could be absorbed.

Greens want to build wind turbines closer to houses

The Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock named the Union on Tuesday as the culprit for the lower expansion. She criticized the fact that the CDU and CSU had blocked themselves against higher tendering volumes at the federal level. The minimum clearances in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria, which are tough in their eyes, would further slow down expansion. “The expansion of renewable energies is crucial for climate protection and the conversion towards a climate-neutral industry. Anyone who says climate protection must also build wind turbines, ”she said.

While there are more wind turbines in the north and Lower Saxony is considered the number one wind power country, the number of turbines is smaller in the south.

Albers is therefore demanding more space for wind power, especially from Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.

He criticized the Bavarian rule, according to which a wind turbine must generally be at least ten times its height from residential developments: A 200 meter high wind turbine must therefore be 2 kilometers away from residential buildings.

That is much stricter than in other countries.

The BWE President calls for binding targets so that two percent of the area in the federal states is used for wind energy.

Many countries are still a long way from this.

Baerbock also said that two percent of the space should be available.

As a one step, Baden-Württemberg is now planning 1,000 new wind turbines in the state forest.

What exactly is slowing down the expansion? The associations clearly address several points: a lack of binding land designation, complicated approval processes and an unresolved species protection conflict. There would also be heterogeneous procedures in the federal states, excessive testing effort, administrative hurdles and insufficiently equipped authorities. The industry demands a nationwide uniform and simple type examination as well as uniform approval procedures in the federal states. Otherwise they would have to continue planning for each federal state individually.