Germany’s Onshore Wind Power Additions Not Enough To Meet 2030 Targets

Germany’s onshore wind power installations jumped in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year, but despite the momentum, capacity additions are still too low to meet government targets, industry association VDMA said on Tuesday.

In the first half of this year, as many as 331 onshore wind turbines (WTGs) with a cumulative capacity of 1,565 megawatts (MW) were installed in Germany, according to a report by Deutsche WindGuard on behalf of industry groups BWE and VDMA Power Systems.

Gross additions in the first half of 2023 already amounted to 65% of the additions in the whole of 2022.

For 2023, the upper range of the associations’ forecast of 2.7 to 3.2 GW onshore wind capacity installations is likely achievable, VDMA said.

However, the addition of new capacity falls short of the requirements to reach the target of 115 GW of onshore wind capacity in 2030, the association added.

The BWE and VDMA associations noted that “even the significantly rising number of approvals is still far from sufficient to support the expansion target of 10 GW per year from 2025.”

“The discrepancy between reality and targets is currently still too high and can only be reduced by consistent and rapid implementation of the measures adopted at the federal level,” the associations said.

Red tape slows down new construction, while the rise in production capacity needs to have visibility on profitability. The German states and local authorities must implement the federal government's measures to accelerate further the rollout of onshore wind, the associations noted.

Last week, Germany held a landmark offshore wind tender, in which energy supermajors BP and TotalEnergies won all of the 7 GW capacity on offer. BP secured leases at two North Sea sites off the coast of Helgoland with total generating potential of about four gigawatts, while TotalEnergies secured the other two sites.

Germany currently has 8.4 GW of operational offshore wind capacity.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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