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Captain Electro: Luis Lindner at the wheel of the electric ship Fitzgerald on the Spree in Berlin
Photo: Thomas Meyer/OSTKREUZ
The »Fitzgerald« glides almost silently over the glittering Spree.
"Listen, only the waves are lapping softly."
Luis Lindner is behind the wheel and looks as if he is listening to a masterpiece in the Berlin Philharmonie.
The "Fitzgerald" is a Berlin excursion ship. The special thing is that the ship's diesel engine no longer roars in the engine room.
Lindner had the Fitzgerald converted to electric drive.
There is only one problem: Luis Lindner is almost never allowed to moor his electric boat and pick up tourists: because traditional Berlin Spree shipping is dominated by shipowners: Almost all of the approximately 100 passenger ships that chauffeur tourists along the sights such as the government district or Museum Island every day have diesel engines on board.
The environmental zone does not apply to ships
Air quality is poor in many large cities.
This is mainly due to traffic.
But inland shipping also makes a significant contribution to pollution, above all through the emission of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), as the Federal Environment Agency has calculated.
According to this, emissions from shipping in cities such as Bonn or Düsseldorf, where the Rhine flows through the inner city, can account for up to 30 percent of total local NO2 emissions.
According to the Senate Department, around 10 percent of soot particle emissions in traffic in Berlin are caused by shipping.
According to RBB research, this corresponds to the fine dust emissions of around 120,000 cars.
In order to make traffic on the water cleaner, Luis Lindner founded the association for electric shipping and charging infrastructure in 2018.
Entrepreneurs who are committed to “clean Spree shipping based on electric drives” are united under its roof.
»One stick after the other between the legs«
Actually, state politics should welcome the push for more electric ships.
Berlin has been governed by a red-red-green alliance since 2016.
Climate protection and a turnaround in mobility are high on the agenda for the Green Senator for Transport, Bettina Jarasch, and the capital wants to be climate-neutral by 2045.
In fact, the Senate and the subordinate authorities "thrown one stick after the other between their legs" at him and his association, complains electric boatman Linder.
The father of three adult children most recently worked as a management consultant in Munich.
In 2015, Lindner and his partner bought the Fitzgerald, a luxurious private yacht with a salon, dining room and sun deck.
In 2016, the couple started a charter business in Berlin for customers with high demands.
Whether it's a dinner cruise, a wedding trip or an exclusive sightseeing tour: "With the motor yacht Fitzgerald you can charter the most beautiful ship in Berlin from April to December," advertises the company.
Actually, some of the diesel barges should have been retired or at least modernized long ago.
The Berlin House of Representatives voted in favor of this in 2018. At that time, a parliamentary decision was made to make ship operations in the city less polluting and more sustainable.
The state made funds available to convert ships to electric propulsion or at least to retrofit the diesel with particle filters.
But modernization is slow.
A spokesman for the Senate Department for the Environment and Transport explains that four of the estimated 100 Berlin passenger ships have so far been retrofitted with particle filters.
The reduction of pollutant emissions from passenger ships has been on the country's agenda for more than ten years.
In the belly of the Fitzgerald, a 225 hp diesel used to work.
An electric motor with 55 kW (75 hp) and 180 kWh battery capacity is now humming there.
That's enough to drive 35 passengers across the Spree at a maximum speed of 15 km/h, and the battery lasts up to twelve hours, says Lindner.
The base conversion cost 200,000 euros.
The state took over 80 percent from subsidies, the owner said he had to pay around 40,000 euros.
Many Berlin passenger boats have not been able or unwilling to make this investment so far.
Some of the passenger ships are too large and heavy for conversion to electric propulsion.
If these are to continue driving for a transitional period, they would at least have to be equipped with soot particle filters and nitrogen oxide catalytic converters for their diesel engines, demands Lindner.
"In the long term, these ships will no longer be able to survive."
Senate leaves shipowners alone
In Hamburg too, where the Alster and its tributaries are popular excursion destinations, most pleasure boats and regatta boats are still powered by combustion engines.
The fleet there is to be completely electrified in the next ten years.
In Berlin, the Senate seems to shy away from putting pressure on the diesel lobby.
"The choice of ship propulsion technology is a decision of the owners," says the spokesman for the environment and transport departments succinctly.
He points out that the pollutant emissions from Berlin's inland waterway transport play a subordinate role compared to motor vehicle traffic.
The contribution of inland waterway vessels is only around 0.8 percent of the CO2 emissions from motor vehicle traffic in Berlin.
For the electric boatman Luis Lindner, this is not an argument: "Fine dust is carcinogenic and the clearly more present evil for the direct health of citizens and visitors to the city." Because of harmful pollutants, not because of CO₂, the city was also subject to driving bans after a lawsuit by the German Environmental Aid and 30 km/h zones in the city.
But the diesel ships are still being sponsored by the water authority, Lindner complains.
The top dog is called star and circle
Stern und Kreisschiffahrt GmbH is the top dog in Berlin's inland shipping industry.
The founding of the company goes back to the imperial era, when in 1888 a merchant from Stettin founded the Spree-Havel steamship company »Stern«.
According to their own statements, Stern und Kreis now operates 31 passenger ships and transports around one million passengers per year.
30 different lines and around 90 piers would be approached.
A great market power is hidden behind these numbers: Because on the waters of Berlin the shipowners operate the jetties.
The more jetties a company maintains in the center, the more tourists it can transport.
According to Stern und Kreis, they are making every effort to technically modernize their fleet.
Between 2008 and 2018, 15 ships in the existing fleet were retrofitted as part of federal funding programs with engines that produce at least 30 percent fewer emissions than the relevant EU regulations require, Managing Director Andreas Behrens told SPIEGEL.
Since 2019, Stern and Kreis have also been using the zero-emission and noise-free SunCat 120 solar catamaran.
It is currently planned to initially convert five ships in the existing fleet from conventional drives to purely electric drives.
According to Behrens, two ships are already in the tender process.
»We hope that the conversion work can start this year.«
Moorings as an eternal monopoly
But the problem in Berlin is not only too few electric ships, there is also a lack of charging stations.
The parliamentary motion »Clean Ships, Clean Air« required the Senate to designate locations for electric shipping.
For example, a new landing stage is to be built at the Humboldthafen directly at the main station.
But that has been dragging on for years.
Lindner accuses the established competition of deliberately keeping competitors with green drives out of the market.
This is made possible by a kind of monopoly on the piers on the inner-city Pree.
These have been in the hands of a few shipowners for many decades and are automatically extended year after year by a kind of eternity clause.
"A scarce asset that is awarded to private companies by the state has to be put out to tender on a regular basis," demands electrician Lindner.
"Precisely to prevent a cartel from forming."
"There is no legal basis for an obligation to build charging stations on jetties," explains the Senate Department for the Environment and Transport.
The jetties could be used by electric passenger ships if the private operator – i.e. the shipowner – »wants and allows this«.
In practice, however, he is denied the Fitzgerald, says Luis Lindner.
The cartel office is investigating
The Berlin state antitrust authority has been investigating since spring 2021.
The procedure was initiated because there are apparently difficulties for "newcomers" in Berlin passenger shipping to set up their own business in the inner city area, says Elke Zeise from the state antitrust authority.
References to a closed and cemented market were taken as an opportunity to examine the sector.
According to the state antitrust authorities, in addition to various water law permits from federal and state authorities, access to the water areas owned by the federal government requires either a contract of use or the possibility of using the jetty facilities of the shipowners already active in Berlin.
But if they refuse access to the jetties, the most beautiful passenger ship is of no use.
Then new entrepreneurs will not be able to take tourists.
Stern- und Kreisschiffahrt GmbH rejects the accusation of abusing market power and keeping other interested parties out of the market.
Shipowner representatives – and diesel salespeople
"Our piers may also be approached by other passenger ship shipping companies as long as this does not disrupt our own operations," assures Managing Director Andreas Behrens.
And the other shipowners?
Most of the traditional passenger boats in the capital are represented by the Shipowners' Association of Berliner Personenschifffahrt eV.
36 shipping companies with a fleet of 94 passenger and other ships are connected there.
The shipowners' association left SPIEGEL's inquiries about the business practices unanswered.
At least its managing director shouldn't mind if shipping in Berlin is still based on fossil fuels for a while: the association officer also runs a ship fuel station in Berlin-Spandau.
Diesel is tapped.
