“Hamster on the transmission highway”

The first so-called “motion conference” for Germany’s planned power transmission highways, dubbed SuedLink and SuedOstLink, has allowed a glimpse into the difficulties that lie ahead for the 2,000-kilometre long project’s implementation, Jens Tartler writes in Tagesspiegel. “Sometimes the planners come to close to a future industrial park, sometimes the woman from the local monument protection has objections,” Tartler writes. One motion argued the power lines, which in large part are supposed to run underground after citizen protests, posed a threat to local hamster populations by heating up the soil, leading to calls for installing the lines on pylons instead, he says. The Federal Grid Agency was now concerned that too many motions put the project’s economic viability in jeopardy, Tartler adds.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier The energy transition and Germany’s power grid for more information.