Baden-Württemberg, which has been ruled green since 2011, has not been one of the countries with the best record of wind energy expansion in the past five years.
In 2020, only twelve new wind turbines were built.
While 6,300 systems are running in Lower Saxony, there are just 731 in the southwest. From the perspective of the Greens, this is due to the hesitant attitude of the CDU.
During the green-red coalition between 2011 and 2016, 62 wind power projects were implemented in the state forest, while there were only five plants during the first green-black coalition.
Rudiger Soldt
Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.
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The new coalition agreement plans to finally catch up and build 1,000 additional wind turbines by 2026.
Environment Minister Thekla Walker (Greens) warns not to play off species protection and climate change against each other.
At the same time, however, she suggests making greater use of exemptions for species protection.
Agriculture Minister Peter Hauk (CDU) is now making a start to accelerate the expansion: The state forest administration "Forst BW" is to play an active role in the marketing of wind energy locations in the future.
The award procedure is to be simplified and additional staff are to be hired.
It should also be examined how to build in capercaillie areas.
Obstacles to expansion in the southwest
Hauk wants to build 500 wind turbines on state forest areas alone. The country owns around 320,000 hectares of forest, which is a quarter of all forest areas. Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) had already said in the last legislative period that the Red Milan should not decide on the success of the energy transition. At that time, to the annoyance of the Greens in the state forest, Peter Hauk only released a few state forest areas for the construction of wind turbines and also stipulated a minimum distance of 1000 meters. Before the coalition negotiations, Hauk changed his stance in view of the challenges posed by climate change - the result is now the marketing offensive.
The expansion of wind energy in Baden-Württemberg was difficult for a number of reasons: Under the black and yellow government, the priority areas were not windy locations, but often only economically unattractive areas. The green-red government changed that and generously designated priority areas, which, however, meant that the investment risk was too great for some entrepreneurs in view of the high approval risks. Windy areas are located in the southwest in hilly forest areas, and the land is also the settlement area of the strictly protected red kite.
Even very windy 1A areas in the auction process could not keep up with 2B areas in windy federal states in the national competition. Baden-Württemberg also suffered particularly from the "reference yield model" in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which was introduced in 2017 and favored windy locations in northern Germany. Many community wind power projects founded in the past few years also failed because of the realization of their plans. In many places, citizens' initiatives fought massively against the expansion of wind power. Since the beginning of the year it is to be promoted with a "southern quota" in the EEG in order to better distribute the production quantities in Germany. In addition to Baden-Württemberg, the Saarland, Bavaria and the south of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate should also benefit from this.The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) recently called for more wind turbines to be built in the state forest.
New figures from the German Wind Energy Association show that the expansion of the most important form of renewable energy is currently picking up a bit: Since January, 240 "onshore wind turbines" with an output of 971 megawatts have been added, an increase of 62 compared to 2020 Percent. In total, an additional 2.5 gigawatts are to be fed into the power grid by wind energy systems this year. Even that would only be half as much as was recorded in the best years of growth for wind energy.