“Self-inflicted doldrums”

The current mood in Germany’s wind power industry is “miserable,” but just like the solar power industry before, the companies are victims of a crisis of their own making, Franz Hubik writes in an opinion piece for Handelsblatt Online. Annual wind power expansion in Germany might fall by a whopping 76 percent to 1,100 megawatts by 2019 in the worst-case scenario, which most industry actors blame on ill-advised policy in the form of renewables auctions, Hubik writes. “But the industry edits out its own failure completely,” he argues. The last few years have seen a record-level of wind power expansion in the country, exceeding all government projections and bringing the industry remarkable profits, but it should have been clear that the boom which was partly fuelled by millions of euros of support via the renewables surcharge would come to an end one day, Hubik says. Wind power companies failed to sufficiently invest in research and international markets and should start to do so rather than spending their resources on political lobbying, he argues.

Find the commentary in German here (behind paywall).

See the CLEW dossier Onshore wind power in Germany for more information.