Governing authorities in Germany have urged one of the country’s biggest energy companies to stop dismantling a wind park to make way for an open-pit mine, after activists said the move symbolised a rollback of the government’s climate protection plans.
Consisting of eight turbines, the Keyenberg wind park in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia is located about half a mile from the edge of a 48 km² surface mine, named after the local village of Garzweiler.
One of the turbines was dismantled last week to make way for the mine’s expansion, with two others to be taken down in the first and last quarter of next year, said a spokesperson for WPD, which manages a portion of the wind park.
A spokesperson for Energiekontor, which built and runs the rest of the windfarm, said a time limit to its operational permit meant it expected to have to dismantle the five remaining turbines by the end of 2023.
Given that Olaf Scholz’s coalition government has pledged to expand energy production massively from renewable sources under its tenure, and with German citizens this winter worried about power cuts amid a decline in Russian gas deliveries, the energy company that owns the Garzweiler mine said it was aware that dismantling windfarms sent a confusing message.
“We realise this comes across as paradoxical,” said Guido Steffen, a spokesperson for RWE. “But that is as matters stand.” Rebuilding the turbines to make way for the expanding mine was part of the original agreement that allowed the windfarm to be constructed in 2001, he added, and not a result of a recent change of German energy policy.
Germany’s cabinet passed a decree last month to bring back idled brown coal capacity up to next summer to boost supply, as imports of Russian gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline ground to a standstill.
Constructed more than 20 years ago, the turbines at the small Keyenberg wind park are less powerful than modern equivalents, with each producing about 1MW of energy per hour at a wind speed of 15 metres per second, roughly a sixth of the output of a more efficient state of the art turbine.
Since windfarms in Germany are no longer eligible for subsidies after 20 years in operation, the park would probably have been “repowered” with new technology or wound down even if it were not for the nearby mine.
Nonetheless, North-Rhine Westphalia’s ministry for economic and energy affairs on Monday urged RWE to abort its plans to dismantle the windfarm.
“In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible,” a spokesperson said.
“We don’t currently see any necessity to dismantle the wind power plant by the L12 [country road] near the Garzweiler surface mine.”
The ministry said it informed RWE of its opinion last week.
This month, RWE and North-Rhine Westphalia’s Green-run economic ministry reached a deal for the energy company to turn off two power plants in 2030, eight years earlier than the current legal framework foresees. In exchange, RWE is allowed to extend the running time of two other plants until 2024. Climate activists have accused the Green party of betraying their cause.
The dismantling of the turbine, activists said last week, was symbolic of the government reneging on its climate promises as it turned to fossil-fuels and coal in the face of a looming energy crisis.
“While our politicians argue about the extension of nuclear power, Germany’s rollback in climate protection is going unnoticed,” said Alexandra Brüne of the local initiative Alle Dörfer Bleiben (All Villages Stay), an alliance of activists lobbying for the preservation of the villages on the edge of the Garzweiler mine.
“Our region is being devastated, the climate is spiralling out of control – and now the wind turbines are being dismantled for more coal,” Brüne said. “We are seeing an energy transition rollback in the middle of the climate catastrophe, it’s absurd.”
Shortly after being sworn in last December, Germany’s left-liberal “traffic light” coalition government announced its intention to boost renewables expansion after years of sluggish growth. The economic and energy ministry, led by the Green party, has committed Germany’s 16 federal states to provide 2% of their landmass for wind energy over the next 10 years.
Nature protection laws have been trimmed with the intention of speeding up planning applications for wind parks near bird nesting sites.
With the new rules still to trickle down to the country’s 16 federal states, wind energy companies say the effect of these changes has yet to materialise. About 365 turbines were built in Germany between January and September, a year-on-year increase of 5.5%.
The number of wind projects that were approved over the same period has gone down, however 524 turbines were granted building permission, a year-on-year decrease of 16.2%.
During his victorious campaign for the federal German vote last September, Scholz said it should be possible to build new windfarms in six months rather than six years. But as of 21 October this year, the planning application for a windfarm in Germany still takes 23 months on average.
The German Wind Energy Association calculates that about 10,000MW of power from renewables are stuck in the administrative process. “These projects have to be quickly authorised by the end of the year so that expansion can be can gain new dynamism over the coming years,” said the chief executive, Wolfram Axthelm.
• This article was amended on 27 October 2022 to correct the detail of the energy production of the Keyenberg wind park turbines.
