Winfried Kretschmann (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, will listen to questions from journalists at a press conference in the state parliament on 09.05.2023. © Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
Ironically, Baden-Württemberg with its Green Prime Minister has not really come out of the starting blocks when it comes to the expansion of wind power. This will now change, promises Prime Minister Kretschmann. The industry is more skeptical.
Stuttgart - It has become at least a little steeper, the "Kretschmann curve" in wind power. In view of the latest figures on the expansion of wind energy, the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg believes that he is still on the right track despite a sobering balance sheet for the past few years. "We can see from the numbers from all over the country that the wind has changed. The trend reversal in wind power is here," said Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann on Monday during a visit to the Sulzbach-Laufen wind farm project (Schwäbisch-Hall district).
According to the latest project figures, around 100 plants have been approved, but are not yet connected to the grid. A further 133 plants are in the approval process. Currently, 178 wind turbines are also being presented to the approval authorities, Kretschmann said. "That's a total of over 400 wind turbines that are currently in the pipeline."
However, the head of government did not comment on when these wheels will turn. "Of course, not all of them will be built in the next two years," he said. "And, of course, a project can sometimes be cancelled. But the majority will feed green electricity into our grid. And that's what matters."
According to the Ministry of State, there is an average of two years between approval and construction of a plant. According to the state, the planned bike in Sulzbach-Laufen was approved only eight months after the application was submitted. From summer 2024, the wind farm will be operated with a total of seven wind turbines.
According to the industry, however, there is still a long way to go before Baden-Württemberg is actually a "model country" for renewable energies, as Kretschmann promised well over a decade ago. According to the industry's estimates, there will be little movement at least in the next two years. "You can see a new impetus among project developers," said Franz Pöter, Managing Director of Plattform Erneuerbare Energien, the umbrella organization of industry associations and organizations. "Nevertheless, it couldn't get much worse than it has been so far."
The figures for wind power would only increase if the aforementioned applications were approved more quickly. And this is not yet the case for 300 of the 400 plants mentioned. "That means they won't be launched before 2025," Pöter told the German Press Agency.
Last autumn, Kretschmann had set the goal of achieving at least 2024 new wind turbines in the country in 100. Here, too, the industry has its doubts: "We tend to assume that significantly fewer bikes will be built in the next two years." And even those now mentioned were far from sufficient for a successful energy transition.
Environment Minister Thekla Walker is promoting the country's concept for reconstruction: "The potential for the coming years is great," said the Greens, who accompanied the Prime Minister to Sulzbach. "You can see that renewable energies can become a central economic sector with regional added value for our country: a strong backbone of our economy." There is a spirit of optimism among the project planners. "We are now carrying this spirit of optimism into the authorities," she promised.
The bare figures for the past year do not support their optimism so far: According to the Federal Network Agency, only 2022 wind turbines were approved in Baden-Württemberg in 41. In Lower Saxony, on the other hand, there were 196 new bikes, in North Rhine-Westphalia 184. In the same period, only 9 new wind turbines were erected in the southwest, compared to 68 in NRW and 67 in Lower Saxony.
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The state government blames the changed tender conditions for the comparatively poor performance. In 2017, the then federal government introduced a wind power cap and restrictive tendering rules. This has slowed down the expansion of wind power hard, said Kretschmann.
Nevertheless, the political opposition does not leave a good hair on the green-black expansion: "Unlike the milkmaid bill of the Prime Minister, the current approval figures speak a different language," said FDP parliamentary group leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke. In the first quarter of 2023, only a single wind turbine was approved. For the SPD, its energy policy spokesman Gernot Gruber criticized: "If new wind turbines are so rare in our country that every new building is personally welcomed by the Prime Minister, that speaks volumes." The state government is doing a "huge balancing act between wanting and becoming". Dpa
