There are also concessions of the unfriendly kind in politics. Recently, even the most staunch opponents of nuclear power among the Green federal politicians deliberately spread the message that one could perhaps think about a tiny exception to the end of nuclear power at the end of the year: the Bavarian reactor Isar 2 finally has it still has fuel for a few more months, as it has now turned out - and by the way, the Free State, well, actually has a special electricity problem, so that it may have to be helped out with special permits from Berlin.

Ralph Bollman

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder took the friendly offer as it was intended: as a frontal attack on the homemade failings of Bavarian energy policy.

Söder suggested that the supply problems caused by the war in Ukraine could be alleviated by domestic gas production - namely by fracking in Lower Saxony, a few hundred kilometers from Bavaria.

That annoyed not only the colleagues of the so-called sister party CDU, which will soon have to pass a state election in the north-west.

Söder himself also achieved exactly the opposite with his suggestion, which was intended as a diversionary maneuver.

In doing so, he also drew attention to the failings of the Christian social energy policy.

Unloading the unpleasant aspects in other federal states rather than with one's own voters has been one of the iron principles of the CSU since the times of his predecessor Horst Seehofer.

A special rule takes revenge

The fact that the Free State is more dependent on Russian gas than other federal states for electricity generation also has home-grown reasons in addition to the geographical location.

When it came to renewable energies, the state of Bavaria recently relied unilaterally on solar power, for one simple reason: residents usually have much less resistance to collectors on roofs or next to the motorway than to wind turbines that can be seen from afar.

However, the sun does not always shine, especially in winter.

When it comes to wind power expansion, however, Bavaria, like the green-governed Baden-Württemberg, is quite far behind.

In 2020, nine new rotors have just been installed.

In 2021 there were only six, this year none so far.

The reason for this lies in state law, which prescribes a minimum distance of two kilometers to the next building for a 200 meter high wind turbine, ten times the height.

Especially in Bavaria, where the settlement structure is characterized in many places by individual farmsteads, this can hardly be maintained anywhere.

Seehofer once enforced the special rule for fear of local protests.

Under pressure from Berlin, Söder was recently ready to make smaller concessions.

In the future, the rule will no longer apply in commercial areas or along the motorways and train routes.

Even then, Bavaria will remain dependent on obtaining energy from the north German wind farms via new power lines.

When the federal government decided on an "energy turnaround" after the reactor accident in Fukushima, Japan, not least under pressure from the CSU, it also planned to build new power lines, the Südlink and the Southeast Link.

Seehofer agreed in 2013, but changed his mind due to public protests.

Bavaria was not able to push through with the idea of ​​laying the western of the two lines in a detour through Hesse rather than through Lower Franconia, but it did with a new route that was largely underground.