The expansion of renewable energies should progress faster. The latest figures from the Federal Network Agency show that there is still a lot of room for improvement. NRW Energy Minister Neubaur sees her state on the right track. A new law should also help.
Bonn/Düsseldorf (dpa/lnw) – Projects from North Rhine-Westphalia achieved the largest share of the bids in the most recent tender by the Network Agency for onshore wind turbines. 3210 megawatts were advertised nationwide. 1502 megawatts were offered. 40 projects in NRW with a total output of 387 megawatts were awarded contracts, as the authority announced in Bonn on Wednesday.
The second largest share, at 354 megawatts, came from 16 projects in Lower Saxony. “We must continue to work on expanding the suitable and priority areas and speeding up the approvals in order to achieve the urgently needed expansion,” explained the President of the Authorities, Klaus Müller, in Bonn.
The North Rhine-Westphalian wind power industry called the numbers sobering. “If politicians, administration and society do not manage to remove all expansion restrictions in the near future, that means that coal and gas-fired power plants will have to stay connected to the grid longer than planned,” said Reiner Priggen, chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Association for Renewable Energies. If the participation in the three outstanding tenders this year remains so low, the state government’s goal of at least 1000 additional wind turbines by 2027 will become increasingly difficult to achieve.
Energy Minister Mona Neubaur (Greens), on the other hand, was pleased with the results. “The fact that the wind in NRW is blowing in the direction of enabling again is now also reflected in the tender results,” she said, according to a statement. “The fact remains: We need renewable energies in North Rhine-Westphalia. Faster and more.”
The black-green state government wants at least 1000 additional wind turbines to be built in NRW by the end of the 2027 legislative period. Among other things, this should be made possible by abolishing the 1000 meter minimum distance in so-called repowering projects. Modern, more powerful systems replace older ones at existing locations. The corresponding law is to be passed by the state parliament on March 8th.
Criticism came from the FDP parliamentary group. Instead of the announced turbo-expansion for wind energy, black-green “not even a gentle breeze” with the draft law on repowering, said energy policy spokesman Dietmar Brockes. “The repowering of wind turbines has already been simplified considerably at federal level. No additional state regulations are required for this.”
