The wind industry regards the construction of new facilities in Baden-Württemberg under the current framework conditions as doomed. In a “Position Paper Wind onshore,” twenty-two affected companies lament, a few days before the state election, that the Southwest, given the regionally higher project costs in the auctions of the Federal Network Agency, has no chance left against the cheaper wind parks in the flatlands.
From the perspective of the companies, led by the Freiburg municipal utility Badenova, the current mechanism of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) ignores “central cost factors in the Southwest.” These include, on the one hand, “higher specific project costs due to challenging topography and permitting procedures” – for example for access roads, cable routes and the necessary special logistics.
Moreover, the projects, because they often consist of only up to three installations, are more laborious to implement than large parks in flatter regions. Accordingly, analyses by the management consultancy Enervis show that Baden-Württemberg could be completely left out in the current February bidding round. From the industry’s perspective, this would be a “catastrophic result for Baden-Württemberg.”
Matthias Welss, commercial managing director of Badenova Renewables, says: “If the federal government does not take into account the peculiarities of wind farms in Baden-Württemberg in the upcoming EEG reform, the expansion of wind power in the Southwest will stall.”
Signatories of the position paper include, among others, EWS Schönau and regional utilities, project developers, and subsidiaries of the Vattenfall and Iberdrola groups.
Competitive pressure on wind power
The background of the joint push is the enormous competitive pressure on wind power in the EEG tenders, since the approval numbers for wind farms have risen markedly nationwide. As more and more projects compete for the limited tenders, only bidders who can offer very low prices receive an award.
Because the Southwest can no longer keep up in this price competition, the wind industry is asking the federal government, in the upcoming revision of the law, on the one hand to increase the number of auctions to reduce the cost pressure on the projects. This would also allow wind farms that require higher remunerations to become profitable to come online.
Additionally, the companies call for the “system benefits of wind energy installations in the Southwest” to be reflected in higher remuneration. By the “system benefits” they mean that wind blows at different times in the South than in the North. Therefore it is economically and socially sensible to build wind energy plants also in the South.
A preferred treatment in the EEG already applies to projects in the South. Through the so-called reference yield model, wind-weak locations receive a remuneration bonus, which in the South can reach up to a factor of 1.55. But these surcharges apparently are no longer sufficient to offset the additional costs caused by the difficult terrain of the Central Uplands.
