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Wind power reaching southern Germany
Hamburg, Germany (UPI) Jul 8, 2009 Germany is one of the world's largest wind power markets, but there is room for significant further onshore growth in the country's southern states. Traveling by train through Schleswig-Holstein means seeing a lot of vast space and wind turbines. Situated between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the sparsely populated German state houses nearly 2,600 turbines with a total capacity of more than 2,500 MW. While northwestern Lower Saxony (6,000 MW) or Brandenburg, more to the east, (3,800 MW) have more installed capacity, Schleswig-Holstein impresses with its relative share: Wind energy accounts for almost 40 percent of the state's power mix. "And repowering our older units could nearly double our output," says Hermann Albers, the head of the German Wind Energy Association and a wind farm owner in Schleswig-Holstein. Thanks to government support in the form of a lucrative feed-in tariff and lots of private green enthusiasm, Germany, with a total wind power capacity of 24,000 MW, has become one of the world's biggest renewable energy nations: Wind accounts for 7 percent of the German power mix. The German government wants to reach 55,000 MW of wind capacity by 2020. Berlin expected offshore to account for most of that growth, but the wind farms at sea have been delayed by the financial crisis and the insecurities and expenses linked to their operation far off the German coast. Until 2020, Albers expects 11,000 MW of additional onshore capacity to be installed. The northern and eastern states have already freed additional space for wind farms. The southern states, namely Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria, have in the past years resisted calls for expanding their wind power portfolio. Baden-Wuerttemberg, a relatively rich state in southwestern Germany, does have some 344 wind turbines. But they have a combined capacity of just 442 MW -- only 0.7 percent of the state's power mix. This is now changing. The population in the southern states is positive toward wind turbines, and the mountains in Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg have strong winds that the modern 5 MW turbines could efficiently harvest. "We will surely be able to use further space in southern Germany," said Albers, adding that politicians there had shown more support for wind recently. Earlier this week, Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg, hosted its first wind industry meeting. The state's Agriculture Minister Ernst Pfister admitted that Baden-Wuerttemberg had some catching up to do when it comes to supporting wind energy, but he vowed to lobby for a significant increase of the share of wind in his state's power mix. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Wind Energy News at Wind Daily
ADB backs China wind farm projectManila (AFP) July 7, 2009 The Asian Development Bank is helping to finance a pioneering private-sector wind farm in China's Inner Mongolia that will help the fast-growing nation fight climate change, officials said Tuesday. The Manila-based ADB is lending about 24 million dollars towards the overall cost of 73 million dollars for the facility, China's first wind farm to be built as a joint venture between Chinese and ... read more |
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