The smaller older windmills
did not get so much attention,
Now that there are almost
30,000 wind turbines in Germany,
and the newer ones are HUGE,
windmills are unpopular.
Only China
and the U.S.
have more
windmills
than Germany.
Germany
will get
about 23.5%
of its energy
from wind
this year.
-- 1,792 new turbines
were installed in 2017.
-- Only 743 new turbines
were installed in 2018.
-- In the first half of 2019,
only 35 new wind turbines
were installed, down -82%
from the first half of 2018.
It’s getting harder
to get permission
to erect huge turbines
in Germany.
In 2014, the German
state of Bavaria ruled
the distance between
a wind turbine and
the nearest housing
must be 10 times
the height of the mast.
Their dense population
to find a suitable spot --
stalling wind energy
development there.
Brandenburg,
the German state
surrounding Berlin,
passed a 2019 law
forcing wind-farm
operators to pay
10,000 euros
( $11,100 )
per turbine each year,
to each community
within 3 kilometers
of the windmills.
Wind projects are
also getting rejected,
or at least stalled,
by claims
they interfere
with communications
by air traffic controllers,
the military, and
radio stations.
Local opponents
of the wind farms
often go to court
to stall new
developments.
They even try to get
existing towers
dismantled !
Wind-industry lobby BWE,
claims that 325
turbine installations,
with a total capacity
of over 1 gigawatt,
( about 2% of Germany's
total installed capacity )
are tied up with litigation.
A large 'green'
organization, NABU,
is 'for' wind energy,
but demands that
new wind farms
preserve nature.
Half of the complaints
are about protecting
various bird and bat
species.
There are also
turbine noise and
infrasound
complaints.
And people
hate the way
wind towers
change the
landscape.
The German word for it,
Verspargelung, means
'visual pollution with
giant asparagus sticks'.
In Thuringia, locals were
very disturbed by a plan
to carve two turbine areas
from a beloved forest.
Now there are
40 citizens’ groups
opposing
more windmills,
in that small state
of 2 million people.
Only six towers have been
built there so far in 2019,
compared with 51 in 2017.
The German government
has reacted by trying
to shift the emphasis
to solar energy, which
accounts for 10% of the
German electricity mix
today.
But Germany is not
a very sunny country.
For German
renewable
energy
expansion,
local politics
has become
a growing barrier.