German govt plans will “kill” wind industry

Sigmar Gabriel, the German Economy Minister, has announced they’d like to amend the Renewable Energies Act (EEG) in the next few months or so. The plan is for the total amount of renewable energy on the grid to be capped at 40 – 45% by 2025. It was at 33% at the end of 2015 but was still climbing rapidly. Check out the eyewatering transition being planned now:

A study by consultants ERA on behalf of the Green Party’s parliamentary group concludes that under these provisions the development of wind energy will collapse fairly soon: A target of 45 percent would mean that only 1500 megawatts could be installed annually after 2018, according to the study. That’s less than half as the average of wind energy installed in the past five days.

Boom, meet Bust.

This would be such a turnaround, that not only would new wind turbines not be added, there would be less of them:

A 40% cap for wind energy completely stop the construction of new wind farms by of 2019, according to the ERA [consultants] study. Overall, this would reduce onshore wind power by almost 6000 megawatts compared to the end of 2015 – which would mean a massive slump in wind power generation by 18 terawatt hours.

The usual understated response from the Greens:

“The domestic market for many manufacturers collapses completely,” says Julia Verlinden, spokesperson for Energy Policy in the Green Party’s parliamentary group. “With their plan, the federal government is killing the wind companies.”

Is this “Peak Wind” or will the plans get watered down?

GWPF has the translation of the German news story.

Image: From a video of the Hornslet wind-turbine collapse Denmark 2008 — watch the high speed disintegration here.



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