Conservatives' draft would further tighten turbine distances, is 'inacceptable' – wind industry

Germany's wind power industry has rejected as "inacceptable" new draft guidelines regulating the minimum distance for wind power turbines proposed by German conservative parliamentary group CDU/CSU that would further tighten the already controversial 1,000-metre rule. Hermann Albers, head of the German Wind Power Association (BWE), said the proposal would further reduce the land area available for onshore wind power instead of increasing it. The distance rule currently planned would already diminish the available space for onshore wind power expansion by 40 percent, the BWE added.

Parliamentarians from chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are seeking to extend the distance rule proposed by the government to all kinds of land use areas and thus it would not be restricted to residential areas only. It could now also apply in areas where wind turbines currently enjoy priority status, according to BWE. The CDU's centre-left government coalition partner SPD poured cold water on the draft, with energy policy coordinator Johan Saathoff saying the party "under no circumstances" would approve of such a rule, calling it "a bad joke at best", reported Tagesspiegel Background. Members of the federal government and the states are meeting in Merkel's chancellery on 30 January to find a way out of the current impasse in onshore wind power production. Expansion of the German energy transition's most important power generation technology fell to the lowest level in 20 years in 2019.