A law has been in the Thuringian state parliament for months, with which municipalities and citizens should receive a contribution for every kilowatt hour of wind power from systems in their area. Now there is movement.
Erfurt - Thuringia's municipalities will benefit financially in the future if wind turbines rotate and generate electricity within a radius of 2,500 meters. The draft law on the wind energy participation law, which has been in the state parliament in Erfurt for months, has cleared the penultimate hurdle with a few corrections in the responsible committee and is going to the state parliament as a draft resolution. This was explained by the energy politicians of the Left, Markus Gleichmann, and the CDU parliamentary group, Thomas Gottweiss, in response to a dpa request in Erfurt.
However, it is still unclear whether the financial participation will be finally discussed and decided upon in the state parliament at the end of April. Gleichmann was confident that the law would still be on the agenda.
No payment directly to citizens
According to Gleichmann, municipalities should in future be able to make a binding payment for each kilowatt hour of electricity generated from the operators of wind turbines in their area. The amount is 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour generated. “So far this has been an optional regulation at the federal level, but we now have a legal right from the municipalities in Thuringia,” said Gleichmann. However, the originally planned additional entitlement of citizens to 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour has been deleted from the law presented by the red-red-green minority coalition. “There was no support from the opposition for this,” said the Left MP. He sees this with “watery eyes”.
The CDU parliamentary group said that the organizational effort required by municipalities to provide a kind of credit to citizens was disproportionately high, as was a model for transferring the citizens' share into a somewhat cheaper local electricity tariff.
The state energy agency ThEGA sees the draft law as a step in the right direction, but not a breakthrough for better acceptance and faster expansion of wind energy in Thuringia. “We would have hoped for more participation through the law for the citizens who have the wind turbines on their doorstep,” explains Ramona Rothe, head of the wind energy service center at the Thuringian State Energy Agency. Instead of directly participating in the revenue from the wind turbines, they remained in the role of spectators. It would have been better to let citizens participate in the success of wind energy with reduced green electricity tariffs or electricity credits.
Stengele hopes for more acceptance of wind turbines
Thuringia's Energy Minister Bernhard Stengele (Greens) said he was pleased that the bill could finally come to a vote. The central point is that more financial participation from municipalities in new wind turbines within a radius of 2.5 kilometers is included. “Local people are very interested in what advantages they have when their regional planning communities designate wind priority areas and project developers plan systems.” With the Wind Energy Participation Act, a minimum standard of financial participation could now become mandatory, said the minister. For the municipalities, this would be understandable and predictable income. Stengele: “That would be an important contribution to greater acceptance of wind energy in Thuringia.”
When it comes to expanding wind energy as a source of electricity, Thuringia has so far made very slow progress compared to the rest of the country. In 2023, only six new wind turbines were actually added in the Free State - according to data from the Federal Wind Energy Association (BWE). This means that the installed capacity has increased by 32 megawatts. Thuringia, along with Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Saxony, is one of the states with “particularly low expansion”. dpa