Icon: enlarge
Siemens gas turbine (archive image from Dolphin Gas Project)
Photo: Andreas Messner / Siemens AG
The Siemens group and its subsidiary Siemens Energy, which has just been spun off, will probably have to call off one of their most ambitious projects: the construction of a huge gas power plant in Israel.
Despite massive protests from local residents and environmentalists, Siemens wanted to build a power plant costing around 750 million euros together with Israeli partners and Siemens Energy in the "Reindeer Energy" project.
With an output of up to 1,300 megawatts, it should be by far the largest gas kiln that private investors have ever built in Israel.
But now "Reindeer Energy" threatens to end.
The reason is a U-turn by Israel's government.
It has now decided to triple the share of renewable energies in electricity generation over the next ten years: from just under 10 to 30 percent.
On the other hand, there will be no more licenses for the new construction of private gas-fired power plants - like the Siemens project - from now on, according to the resolution, which the daily newspaper "Haaretz" reported on.
Accordingly, the government will only allow private investors to set up solar fields and other regenerative power plants.
District Administrator is "relieved"
"We are relieved: the Reindeer power plant will not be built," said Oshrat Gonen, the district administrator of the affected Hod HaSharon region, to SPIEGEL.
After the decision, Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz personally assured her that he would no longer be issuing such licenses.
And the Siemens consortium still lacked the decisive approval from the government until the end.
A Siemens Energy spokesman told SPIEGEL on request: "We have not received any official information from the government. We do not know the details of the decision."
There were protests in the region against the planned power plant in 14 neighboring Israeli and two Palestinian communities.
The pile was to be built in the immediate vicinity of the demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank: less than 500 meters away from Israeli and Palestinian residential areas.
"We have 300 days of sunshine"
Residents and local politicians feared damage to health from exhaust gases and noise as well as the pollution of a nearby drinking water reservoir.
For Siemens Energy, the end of the Reindeer project would be a major setback.
The company should deliver key technology for the power plant.
Only at the end of September did the parent company Siemens split off its power plant division and go public.
Since then, Siemens Energy's share price has fallen by around 15 percent.
The core business of Siemens Energy is controversial: Technologies for fossil power plants and production systems for the oil and gas industry.
Among other things, the company plans to soon deliver turbines for two new coal-fired power plants in Indonesia - even though Siemens boss Joe Kaeser had announced the exit from such climate-damaging projects in the summer.
The parent company and its pension fund still hold 45 percent of the shares in Siemens Energy.
Environmentalists welcomed the realignment of Israeli energy policy. "Siemens Energy must learn from it," said Regine Richter from the Urgewald organization, "and focus more on renewable energies."
In the region of Hod HaSharon, solar systems are now to be built on a large scale, according to the will of the district administrator.
Solar power is cleaner and also cheaper, Gonen told SPIEGEL.
"The sun shines 300 days a year here."
Icon: The mirror