A total of 551 onshore wind turbines with 2,403 megawatts of installed capacity were erected in Germany in 2022. While this is an increase of 25% over the previous year, the additions remain too low to meet the federal government’s targets, say German wind energy federation Bundesverband WindEnergie (BWE) and mechanical engineering association VDMA.
“The figures remain disappointing for the fifth year in a row. They are symptomatic of the political mismanagement of the last federal government,” says Hermann Albers, president of BWE. “We now need a ramp-up of projects as quickly as possible – this would be an urgently needed positive industrial policy signal for the entire supply chain in Germany and Europe,” adds Dennis Rendschmidt, managing director at VDMA Power Systems.
Besides delays in permissions to build, there were also considerable problems last year with the transport of onshore wind turbines from the production sites to installation sites. This is an echo of a familiar problem for players in the steel value chain.
Wind power is a relevant consumer sector for makers of electrical sheet for turbines, and of plate for the towers. A manager of a plate distributor expresses concern that the wind power expansion is not gaining sufficient momentum. According to him, some 1,000 units are waiting for permission to be built, mostly from local authorities. “With 1,000 tonnes or more per tower, this is quite a figure that we lose out on,” he tells Kallanish.
Christian Koehl Germany
