As of: February 9, 2024, 4:00 p.m
By: Timo Aichele
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Timo Aichele deputy editorial director © Aichele
The Oberdorfen heating network failed due to costs.
In Mehring or Wartenberg, citizens are stopping wind power projects.
Positive communication is overdue.
Comment.
Anyone who speaks to Klaus Steiner these days will experience a thoughtful municipal utility boss.
Energy is his job.
Sober and calm, Steiner always tries to convince people with facts and realistic assessments.
But he admits: he is increasingly at a loss for words.
The municipal utilities had to bury the heating network in Oberdorfen before just one meter of pipe was laid.
A bitter blow.
The cost explosion in the construction sector was simply too severe for those willing to join.
The realist Steiner can't really argue with that.
Ecology without economics just doesn't work.
In other energy transition projects, however, the two Ö's enter into a perfect symbiosis - and yet fail due to the will of the people.
In Mehring, a referendum stopped the first ten of 40 wind turbines for the southeast Bavarian chemical triangle.
The same fate befell the wind turbine in Auerbach.
It should have been built in a forest that almost only mushroom hunters know.
In both cases, the anti-wind power lobby “Vernunftkraft” agitated.
Their pseudo-scientific arguments fall on fertile ground, prepared by the parties of the Bavarian state government.
For years, people were led to believe that “asparagus deforestation”, reflective PV modules and “monster” power lines were a greater evil than the lack of affordable green electricity.
It seems grotesque that the CSU and Free Voters are now complaining that the same citizens are voting against such projects.
Making the need for transformation clear and encouraging at the same time – that has long been the order of the day.