Aigner admits mistakes in power line expansion - Söder and Seehofer as brakemen
Created: 08/10/2022 13:42
By: Thomas Eldersch
Has Bavaria missed the expansion of power lines?
State President Ilse Aigner sees it that way and talks about the resistance in her own party.
Munich – Does that border on insult to majesty or just late insight?
State President Ilse Aigner (CSU) admitted in an interview with
Zeit Online
that Bavaria had overslept the expansion of the power lines.
But that's not all, she even named the culprits, only to defend them again shortly afterwards.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) continues to evoke Bavaria's pioneering role in the expansion of renewable energies like a mantra.
Aigner admits that he failed due to the resistance of Söder and Seehofer
It seems unlikely that the party leader liked what the head of the Upper Bavarian CSU revealed in the interview.
Aigner openly admitted that the CSU's resistance to the expansion of the power lines was a mistake.
This is another reason why Bavaria is “more dependent than others on nuclear power plants for electricity and there are bottlenecks in the lines from north to south”.
And it goes further.
The CSU is still only strong as a team, but Markus Söder knows that too.
President of the Landtag Ilse Aigner in a Zeit online interview
Aigner emphasized that in 2015, as Bavarian Minister of Energy, she had campaigned for the routes to the then Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) and the then Minister of Home Affairs Markus Söder, but was unable to get her way.
"Unfortunately, I didn't always get through with the facts," said the President of the Landtag.
Open revolt against your own party and its leaders?
Aigner wants to support Söder in the 2023 state elections
Not quite.
She immediately stood behind her party leader and said she would fight for Söder's re-election in the 2023 state elections - although she had already been secretly traded as his successor.
"He is without a doubt a very strong Prime Minister, that is obvious, undeniably very hardworking and very assertive.
The CSU is still only strong as a team, but Markus Söder knows that too.
Ilse Aigner was in favor of expanding the power lines in Bavaria, but it failed because of Markus Söder, among others.
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
She also denied the accusation that Bavaria had overslept the expansion of renewable energies.
"When it comes to expanding solar energy, hydroelectric power and biomass, we are clearly at the top." Then she made it clear that a dispute between the federal states would only have disadvantages.
“If you try to weaken the South, the North will soon run out of money too.
You can calculate how much flows from the south into the state financial equalization system every year.
Nobody can have an interest in weakening the industrial location in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.”
also read
Disastrous evening at the Bayreuth Festival: performance booed mercilessly - audience angry
First a heat wave of 34 degrees, then a cold drop of air touches Bavaria – low could bring even hotter air
(By the way: Our Bayern newsletter informs you about all the important stories from Bavaria. Register here.)
Is Bavaria really at the top when it comes to renewable energies?
But is Bavaria really as good at renewable energies as Markus Söder likes to make it out to be?
The BR did some research in its #Faktenfuchs section.
In many categories in which the CSU leader sees the Free State on the one or two, there is no reference to the size of the country or the population for a meaningful classification.
An example of the BR
In terms of "installed capacity", Bavaria is in first place.
In other words, at the maximum output that a wind turbine can produce, for example.
In absolute figures this means (source: market master data from the Federal Network Agency): Bavaria supplies 19,000 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity.
Then comes Lower Saxony with 17,500 MW, followed by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg with 13,000 MW.
However, if you put the figures in relation to the area of the state, Bavaria only ranks in the middle.
Due to its size and the “installed capacity of renewable energies per square kilometer”, the Free State would only come in ninth out of 13 (apart from the city states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen).
The frontrunners would be Schleswig-Holstein, then Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
The same principle can also be used for the other key figures that Söder likes to present.
Stefan Holzheu, employee at the Center for Ecology and Environmental Research at the University of Bayreuth, helped the BR as an expert.
He wrote on Twitter that looking at the absolute numbers misleads people.
The #Faktenfuchs also states that Bavaria is clearly at the bottom when it comes to the expansion of wind energy.
This is partly due to the 10H rule.
Although the Free State is strong when it comes to hydropower, the potential has been exhausted.
When it comes to solar energy, Bavaria clearly leads the state comparison.
But if you listen to Detlef Fischer from the Association of Bavarian Energy and Water Management (VBEW), then we lack a "needs-based power supply".
There is a lack of storage options.
Photovoltaics "are of no use to us at night and hardly in winter," says Fischer.
"Too little has been done" here, especially with regard to storing excess energy on sunny summer days.
(phone)
All news and stories from Bavaria can now also be found on our brand new Facebook page Merkur Bayern.
