Germany’s green-on-green wind power battle 

BERLIN – Germany’s new government is planning on doing something that’s certain to enrage some of its keenest environmentalist supporters – dramatically expand wind power.

The government aims to build between 1,000 and 1,500 new wind towers a year – breaking a red tape logjam that had blocked many projects as a result of local resistance often couched in terms of protecting the environment, birds or beautiful views. That means up to 2 percent of the country will be covered by new wind projects.

The job of balancing the need to swiftly build up renewable energy while also preserving nature falls to Steffi Lemke, the new environment minister.

“My aim is to propel nature-based solutions,” she told POLITICO, adding: “I want to tackle both biodiversity loss and the climate crisis in the coming years, as we need to address these two issues together.”

It’s not going to be easy.

Wind power is crucial to Germany’s economic future as the country powers down its last nuclear reactors, which last year generated about 12 percent of its electricity. Three were shut down last week and the final three will close this year. The new government has also committed to scrapping coal-fired power by 2030, speeding up the previous timeline of exiting coal – which generated about a quarter of Germany’s power last year – by 2038.

But onshore wind also arouses fierce opposition, which is why Bavaria passed its 10H law, mandating that a wind tower has to be 10 times its height, measured from the ground to the tip of the turbine blade, from the nearest residential building. That’s made new wind developments in the state almost impossible.

Accelerated planning – including in the area of renewable energy – “cannot go at the expense of nature and species protection,” said Jörg-Andreas Krüger, president of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union of Germany (NABU), an NGO that used to be at the forefront of suing wind energy projects for their failure to sufficiently protect endangered species and only recently warmed up to the idea of expanding wind energy.

Many fights over onshore wind towers revolve around birds. NABU estimates that wind farms in Germany kill more than 100,000 birds a year. That sounds like a lot, but glass-covered buildings kill about 108 million birds per year, and 70 million die in collisions with cars, trucks and trains.

“As soon as a red kite” – a bird species granted special protection under EU law – “appears in a planning site, in principle nothing can be built there,” Sven Giegold, state secretary in the new combined climate and economy ministry, told German news wire RND.

Giegold’s boss and Lemke’s fellow Greens member Climate and Economy Minister Robert Habeck is well aware of the tensions between the climate and the environment.

“In addition to the climate crisis, a second major ecological crisis is fermenting with the extinction of species – not exactly a cuddly question either. We have to bring the economy and the climate, the environment and agriculture together,” Habeck, the deputy chancellor, told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Greens divided

Disagreements over how to ramp up wind power reflect old splits within the Greens, pitting the party’s pragmatists, or Realos, who include Habeck, against its left-leaning fundamentalists, or Fundis, seen as closer to Lemke, who was the party’s parliament group spokesperson for environmental protection in the past two legislative terms.

The party is already divided over the role that natural gas should play in the energy transition, and onshore wind is another pressure point.

The government plans for between 85 gigawatts and 125 GW of onshore wind by 2030, up from 56 GW today, mean building more than 5 GW of new capacity a year. In 2019, only 1 GW was installed, according to WindEurope, the industry lobby.

Making sure nature protection has an adequate place in the government’s push for clean energy will require Lemke to find a balance between coalition promises and the concerns of core elements of the Greens voting bloc.

It’s already leading to friction.

Giegold called for EU nature protection law to be revised so it doesn’t stand in the way of swiftly rolling out renewable energy.

But Lemke said Giegold’s idea “is not a suggestion from the government” – alluding to the fact that it hadn’t been made by Habeck himself. She insisted the government would fulfill the coalition agreement to implement EU nature protection law.

The new government’s coalition deal acknowledges that “the conservation of biodiversity is a human task and an ethical obligation” and aims to set up a protection program focusing on species endangered by the expansion of renewable energy.

“Species protection is as important as climate protection and even more important, as we can only adapt to climate change when we have species protection,” said Dirk Albach, a professor studying biodiversity at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.

Transitioning to cleaner energy also means rethinking the way Germans live, argued Michael Schäfer, head of climate and environmental policy at NABU. He said German society has an “unsustainable … hunger for energy” that needs to be reduced. “We do not only need to switch to 100 percent renewable energy, we also need to reduce our overall energy and nature consumption.”

That’s not an easy message for politicians to sell, which adds to the Greens’ conundrum as they try to balance the need to stay true to their party’s environmentalist roots and the need to be part of a broader ruling coalition.

The party teamed up with NABU and last month presented a joint position paper on the pathway toward a “nature-friendly wind energy expansion” – seen as a Green attempt to show that the party isn’t forgetting about nature in its green energy push.

It’s also a recognition that politicians who stray from party orthodoxy can run into trouble.

In the state of Hesse, for example, environmental organizations and Green party members lashed out at Green Transport Minister Tarek Al-Wazir for expanding a highway running through a forest – a plan that was part of the coalition deal that brought the Greens into the state government.

Winning over the public

Lemke will also need to address public resistance by explaining the broader implications of climate change versus the more local environmental concerns preventing wind power projects from being built.

Simon Müller, director of think tank Agora Energiewende’s work in Germany, said: “It is often a loud minority of opponents that overshadows the silent majority that is actually in favor of such projects … It is very important to explain why the climate crisis is an important problem for all of us, why renewables are a solution to this problem, and thus renewables expansion is necessary.”

Stressing the necessity of switching to renewables to halt biodiversity loss will be crucial.

Schäfer pointed out that “good climate protection is a prerequisite for species conservation” – as global warming is one of the major drivers of species loss.

Lemke argues wind power isn’t the largest hazard to biodiversity. “A single wind park isn’t the biggest threat to bird or insect populations,” she said. Species and nature are endangered by “way more than just the expansion of wind energy,” namely by “industrial agriculture, the use of pesticides or algal bloom.”

While that might appease wind energy critics, it could ignite battles with Cem Özdemir, the country’s new agriculture minister and another senior Green.