At the Wind Energy trade fair in Hamburg: Cross-section through an underwater cable that is supposed to bring electricity from an offshore wind farm to land
Photo: dpa/Marcus Brandt
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck is already planning ahead if things should go wrong. In Hamburg on Tuesday he called on the federal states to show significantly more commitment and speed in the expansion of wind energy. The countries could not continue as before, said the Green politician. In order to achieve the ambitious expansion goals, there is only a small time window of a few months.
While Habeck opened the leading trade fair “Wind Energy” in Hamburg with over 1400 exhibitors from 37 countries, the industry representatives were brimming with optimism. “We experienced the two best years for installations in 2021 and 2022,” said Ben Backwell, head of the international wind energy association GWEC. The industry has proven to be remarkably resilient in the pandemic around the world. And in future it will not only be about climate protection and sustainability, but also about energy security and prices. Wind power is now considered a cheap alternative to conventional power generation. This is how modern systems run profitably even without government subsidies.
To the delight of the economy, the guidelines from politics are not only in Germany extremely ambitious. According to an action plan adopted by the European Commission in May, onshore capacity is to be expanded from 173 to 374 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and at sea from 16 to 79 GW. While a record number of new plants are being built in China and the USA, there is a lull in Germany. Globally, Germany is still number three after both countries in terms of installed capacity.
Björn Spiegel, Vice President of the German Wind Energy Association, summed up the challenges and opportunities for his industry: “In the last five years we have built an average of 2.4 GW of onshore wind and 1.4 GW of offshore wind. What we need now is 10 GW onshore and 2.8 GW offshore every year.« That means an annual quadrupling of wind power on land and a doubling in the offshore area so that the federal government’s goals can still be achieved in eight years.
However, the international turbulent development seems to be overtaking the German wind industry. The Nordex company closed the last rotor blade factory in Rostock. Rotor blades with a length of up to 135 meters will no longer be produced in Germany and will have to be imported from other countries.
Offshore, the beacon of hope for German industry, there is also low tide: no wind turbines have been put into operation since the beginning of 2021. Here, too, there are exciting developments such as »Floating Offshore Wind«. Floating wind turbines could open up additional deep water areas for power generation, the suitable, windy sea areas are at least four times larger than those in which one can build plants with solid foundations. However, environmentalists complain that the living space for animals is getting smaller and smaller.
“All the signs point to Go – and hardly anything happens,” says Thorsten Ludwig. The head of research at the agency for structural and personnel development in Bremen interviewed the works councils of 28 companies with around 25,000 employees from all over Germany for IG Metall. After difficult years with plant closures, relocations to Portugal, China and India as well as staff cuts – Ludwig estimates this at every tenth job – they still cover almost the entire value chain within Germany: from the turbine to the cable connection to service.
“The green job miracle won’t happen by itself,” cried the district manager of IG Metall Coast, Daniel Friedrich, in front of the exhibition halls to the Vestas employees who were demonstrating there for a collective agreement. The days of Sunday speeches by politicians and ambitious legislative projects are over, now a “real energy transition” must finally be implemented. Incidentally, the industry is not innocent in its problems, so Friedrich. The wind industry only trains half as many young people as comparable sectors.
In order to accelerate the expansion, governments urgently need to streamline planning and approval procedures and improve the network infrastructure, four associations demand in a “Hamburg Declaration”. Renewable energies should be “at the center of political decisions”. National and regional industrial policy must recognize wind energy as a “strategically important industry”. Turbine manufacturers and the associated supply chain must have “full, unrestricted access” to the components they need.
Such demands are given a tailwind by Minister Habeck. The government has done its homework. The Vice Chancellor received a lot of applause for this at the fair, which ran until Friday. From the point of view of the wind power lobby, the buck belongs to the federal states.
