Left complains at a snail’s pace
Expansion of wind power falters under traffic lights
01/13/2023, 11:15 am
At the end of last year, Germany had almost 60,000 wind turbines on land and at sea. Although new systems have been added, their number has been limited in recent years. Left parliamentary group leader Bartsch accuses the government coalition of empty promises – he calls a Green “wind power blockers of the republic”.
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 (RND) reported. 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.
According to the report, there were a total of 57,919 wind turbines on land and 1,532 offshore in Germany at the end of 2022, with a total capacity of 66,003 megawatts. This is a net increase of around 2,100 megawatts over the previous year, compared to an additional 8,700 megawatts from 2020 to 2021.
Bartsch: Habeck even slower than Altmaier
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 from the CDU, criticized the left-wing faction leader, who had asked the Ministry of Economics.
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 report, 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 turbines.
The Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU leader Markus Söder and Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann from the Greens are “the republic’s wind power blockers,” 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”.