The Agora Energiewende think tank has given some thought to the expansion of wind energy and published a paper entitled "Tailwind for climate neutrality. 15 measures for the accelerated expansion of onshore wind energy", which was presented on March 29, 2023.
Domestic electricity generation from wind and solar is at the heart of the transformation of all sectors towards climate neutrality. Despite all the efforts made in 2022, there is still a large gap between actual expansion and expansion targets for onshore wind energy. The measures already taken by the German government and at EU level to close this gap are necessary. But they will not be enough, according to the representatives of the think tank and lobby organization Agora Energiewende.
The underlying questions were what needs to happen in order to bring the expansion of onshore wind energy onto the 2030 target path and how the current obstacles and problems in the implementation of projects can be removed or solved. The results at a glance:
- The expansion crisis for onshore wind energy in Germany continues. In 2023, the expansion will still be significantly too low to achieve the 2030 target of 115 gigawatts. In order to achieve the required quadrupling of annual expansion, a comprehensive acceleration package for onshore wind must be implemented as a matter of urgency. A combination of short-, medium- and long-term measures is necessary to significantly shorten approval times and make sufficient areas available.
- In the short term, five GW can be connected to the grid by 2024 by clearing the backlog of projects ready for construction. This will require measures to resolve existing blockages in the financing processes. These include, for example, returning existing awards and retendering projects that are underfunded due to inflation and temporarily suspending penalty payments.
- Project development times must be halved from an average of eight to four years in order to reach the target level by 2026. Wind energy and nature conservation areas must be permanently unbundled to achieve this. To this end, it is important that the EU emergency regulation is made permanent. Additional areas can be developed quickly by opening up commercial and other special construction areas for wind power production and giving local authorities more freedom in designating areas.
- In order to achieve a climate-neutral electricity system in 2035, it is necessary to stabilize the expansion of wind energy at a high level from 2026 onwards. To achieve this, additional land potential must be developed, approvals must be further simplified and project processes must be better interlinked. Among other things, this can be achieved by bringing forward the interim target in the Wind Energy Area Requirements Act by two years to the end of 2025, approving wind turbines in type variant clusters and improving process coordination in project development.
