Climate change and dependency on Russia are increasing the pressure to move faster with renewables. The Federal Minister of Economics is certain that if Bavaria had not made such omissions when it came to wind power, there would not have been a debate about longer-running nuclear power plants.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck has accused Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder of failing to expand wind power. “I am dependent on the help of the federal states. The nuclear debate we are currently having is only the result of the lack of wind power expansion in Bavaria and the power grids,” said Habeck, according to Spiegel, at the climate conference of the magazine and the consulting firm BCG. “If, as decided ten years ago, the Federal Republic had met its goals everywhere, we would have left this question behind us long ago.”
In the direction of Söder, Habeck said that according to German law, “every federal state, including Bavaria”, must install two percent of wind turbines on the state’s area. “Without discussion,” said Habeck. According to the recently passed wind-on-shore law, Bavaria, where around 0.7 percent of the area is currently built up with wind turbines, is to install such systems on 1.1 percent of its area by the end of 2026 and on 1.8 percent by the end of 2032 the Bavarian area.
In Germany there is currently almost 57 gigawatts of wind power capacity on land – and that took decades. However, the capacities would have to be doubled within eight years, Habeck said today at the opening of the world’s largest wind trade fair, WindEnergy. Last year, however, only two gigawatts were installed, but ten gigawatts would be necessary – exactly those ten gigawatt capacities that are currently in the approval process of the federal states. “If all federal states would do their job (…) then we would have a chance,” stressed Habeck. The federal government can pass as many laws as it wants, if the federal states don’t do the work, “we will lose”.
At the same time, the minister defended the policy of the traffic light coalition. Before the summer holidays, “the biggest renewable energy package in years, maybe decades” was brought to the Bundestag. “Grid expansion, wind power expansion, solar expansion will continue at an accelerated pace,” says Habeck. An upswing can already be seen in solar energy, but there are also delivery problems there, as with wind power. In addition, there are bottlenecks in the approval process.