The Greens complain that geothermal energy was only given “subsidies on a micro scale”. In 15 years, less money has flowed to Russia than per day for gas and oil.
Munich (dpa / lby) – In the past 15 years, the Free State has invested little in the promotion of domestic geothermal projects. This emerges from a response from the Ministry of Economics to a request from the Greens in the state parliament. The Greens criticize that the funding amounts are “mealy” – that’s an indictment.
According to the ministry, a little more than 4.3 million euros have been made available from the Bavarian energy research program for deep geothermal projects over the past 15 years. During this period, just under 14.6 million euros from the state budget were used to promote deep geothermal heat networks.
In its response to the Greens’ query, however, the ministry emphasizes that investigations into geothermal energy are also possible in principle as part of another funding program for municipal energy use plans – but here the individual main topics are not recorded. “For this reason, it is not possible to give a specific indication of the amount of funding for geothermal energy over the past 15 years,” argues the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
“I already knew beforehand that this government doesn’t have much to do with geothermal energy. But these numbers of subsidies in the micro range speak a very special fossil language,” criticized the budget spokeswoman for the Greens, Claudia Köhler.
Green energy expert Martin Stümpfig spoke of an indictment. “In the first half of this year, Bavaria transferred more than 25 million euros a day for oil and gas to Putin and Russia, thereby filling the war coffers well. That’s significantly more in one day than for domestic geothermal energy in 15 years.” With the 14.6 million euros, the state government created a little more than seven kilometers of network – that was “a joke”. All other “mini amounts” listed are “once again just studies, reports and energy usage plans”. “We don’t have a knowledge problem, we have an implementation problem,” he criticized.
