[cityhantam]

https://euobserver.com/war-peace-green-economy/154574

German wind energy stumbles

"Wind energy is one of the supporting pillars of the energy transformation," says the German Advisory Council on the Environment, which consults with the federal government in Berlin. "If it's not expanded far more swiftly, the German climate protection goals cannot be achieved."

Yet even as Russia's Ukraine war adds geopolitics to reasons for more domestic energy, a trifecta of bureaucracy, furious local opposition and intra-Green battles on wind energy vs protecting iconic birds like eagles will make delivery of Germany's expansion of wind power arduous at best.

This is not theory. These are my experiences as our family forestry business seeks to build wind turbines on four different sites in eastern Germany.

Wind turbine construction has been strangled in Germany by multiple constraints. The amount of electricity produced by newly-built windmills has plunged to less than half of the record peak set in 2017 for each of the last four years.


The Green party's minster for economy and climate protection, Robert Habeck, plans to radically increase the number of wind turbines and wants two-percent of German territory to be used for windmills — to enable Europe's biggest economy to produce 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 (up from 42 percent today) and be carbon-neutral by 2035.

But Habeck's problem is that windmills bitterly divide his followers between those prioritising clean energy and those wanting nature conservation, even at the cost of de-growth. Habeck's ministry declined to give an in-person or telephone interview for this story and did not reply to emailed questions.....

..... German polls show big majorities love renewables. Just NIMBY ("Not In My Backyard, Please). And not in our sacred forests.

Unless it changes tack, this one-third green German government, despite the best of intentions, is not going to be deliver on its renewable energy targets.