Germany Backs New Technology Energy
Inaugurating an offshore wind farm, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on 2 May that her country is offering Euro 5 billion in soft loans to kick-start investment in renewable energy.
Investors had been expecting Berlin to step up soft loans and tax breaks for wind farms as Germany rushes to end its use of nuclear power, possibly within a decade, amid public alarm at the Fukushima disaster in Japan. With Germany embroiled in debate over shutting down its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the issue of boosting the country’s electricity output from renewable sources has gained in importance.
The latest site, Baltic 1, comprises 21 towers in water 16 kilometers offshore and belongs to EnBW, one of the big four utilities. It is Germany’s first on the Baltic Sea, where Denmark and Sweden already have such offshore windpower sites.
Turbines at sea are vulnerable to storms and investors fear many will not last out their projected working life, so government seed money is needed to kick-start the sector and encourage engineers to design tougher plants.
Pressing a button on a jetty at the coastal resort of Zingst to open Baltic 1, Merkel said the loans would be administered by KfW, the federal government’s soft-loans bank, and would foster “new technology,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported. She said she perceived “a good chance” the program would be approved quickly.
A panel of advisers is currently reviewing the future of nuclear power and is expected to urge an early closedown of all 17 plants in Germany, along with mass building of wind turbines and solar-power collectors to replace them. As it runs out of space for turbines on land, Germany is keen to put up more turbines at sea and in southern Germany, where officials have so far argued that they would mar beautiful scenery. Merkel urged the south to build “a bit more” of the turbines.
The owners claimed the 50-megawatt Baltic 1 was Germany’s first “commercial” wind farm offshore. Last month, a North Sea wind farm, Bard Offshore 1, was opened amid similar claims.
Both claims were a jab at an earlier North Sea wind farm, Alpha Ventus, which was partly paid for from a government science fund. But none of the farms is pure private enterprise, since all are sheltered by legislation and tax breaks.
EnBW took three years to build Baltic 1, rated to produce up to 185 gigawatt-hours of power annually, enough to supply 50,000 households. The company is planning another wind farm, Baltic 2, with 80 turbines offshore, to be completed in 2013. The German federal office for marine shipping BSH in Rostock said that permission has been granted for 23 offshore wind farms in the North Sea with a total installed capacity of 7,650 MW and three in the Baltic Sea with total capacity of 1,040 MW. At the same time, the BSH has received applications for a further 56 North Sea wind farms and 15 in the Baltic Sea.
German Transportation Minister Peter Ramsauer said on 4 May that his country aims to cut bureaucratic red tape that can hold up the construction of offshore windparks by bundling and transferring all responsibility for their approval process to one state authority. “This draft bill is a key first step toward a new energy concept by the federal government,” he said. Should the draft bill be approved by parliament, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) would be the sole authority to decide on new windpark projects.
Previously, a state authority on nature conservancy was charged with reviewing the impact on fish and seabirds — an examination that will now be demoted from a required separate approval to a simple position paper to be submitted to the BSH.
The simplification earned praise from the windpark lobby. “The ambitious target of the federal government to install an offshore wind energy capacity of 10,000 megawatts by 2020 must not fail because differing authorities are jockeying for influence,” said Hermann Albers, head of the German wind energy industry association BWE, whose 3,000 corporate members include Siemens, Vestas and Enercon.
Investors had been expecting Berlin to step up soft loans and tax breaks for wind farms as Germany rushes to end its use of nuclear power, possibly within a decade, amid public alarm at the Fukushima disaster in Japan. With Germany embroiled in debate over shutting down its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the issue of boosting the country’s electricity output from renewable sources has gained in importance.
The latest site, Baltic 1, comprises 21 towers in water 16 kilometers offshore and belongs to EnBW, one of the big four utilities. It is Germany’s first on the Baltic Sea, where Denmark and Sweden already have such offshore windpower sites.
Turbines at sea are vulnerable to storms and investors fear many will not last out their projected working life, so government seed money is needed to kick-start the sector and encourage engineers to design tougher plants.
Pressing a button on a jetty at the coastal resort of Zingst to open Baltic 1, Merkel said the loans would be administered by KfW, the federal government’s soft-loans bank, and would foster “new technology,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported. She said she perceived “a good chance” the program would be approved quickly.
A panel of advisers is currently reviewing the future of nuclear power and is expected to urge an early closedown of all 17 plants in Germany, along with mass building of wind turbines and solar-power collectors to replace them. As it runs out of space for turbines on land, Germany is keen to put up more turbines at sea and in southern Germany, where officials have so far argued that they would mar beautiful scenery. Merkel urged the south to build “a bit more” of the turbines.
The owners claimed the 50-megawatt Baltic 1 was Germany’s first “commercial” wind farm offshore. Last month, a North Sea wind farm, Bard Offshore 1, was opened amid similar claims.
Both claims were a jab at an earlier North Sea wind farm, Alpha Ventus, which was partly paid for from a government science fund. But none of the farms is pure private enterprise, since all are sheltered by legislation and tax breaks.
EnBW took three years to build Baltic 1, rated to produce up to 185 gigawatt-hours of power annually, enough to supply 50,000 households. The company is planning another wind farm, Baltic 2, with 80 turbines offshore, to be completed in 2013. The German federal office for marine shipping BSH in Rostock said that permission has been granted for 23 offshore wind farms in the North Sea with a total installed capacity of 7,650 MW and three in the Baltic Sea with total capacity of 1,040 MW. At the same time, the BSH has received applications for a further 56 North Sea wind farms and 15 in the Baltic Sea.
German Transportation Minister Peter Ramsauer said on 4 May that his country aims to cut bureaucratic red tape that can hold up the construction of offshore windparks by bundling and transferring all responsibility for their approval process to one state authority. “This draft bill is a key first step toward a new energy concept by the federal government,” he said. Should the draft bill be approved by parliament, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) would be the sole authority to decide on new windpark projects.
Previously, a state authority on nature conservancy was charged with reviewing the impact on fish and seabirds — an examination that will now be demoted from a required separate approval to a simple position paper to be submitted to the BSH.
The simplification earned praise from the windpark lobby. “The ambitious target of the federal government to install an offshore wind energy capacity of 10,000 megawatts by 2020 must not fail because differing authorities are jockeying for influence,” said Hermann Albers, head of the German wind energy industry association BWE, whose 3,000 corporate members include Siemens, Vestas and Enercon.
Source Link:- http://www.neurope.eu
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