Short-term wind power targets in Germany at risk due to implementation delays – analysis

The short-term wind power expansion targets in Germany are unlikely to be met, given that project implementation of licensed wind farms is taking longer than expected, according to an analysis from the Science Media Center (SMC). While the country’s total wind power capacity keeps rising at an accelerating rate, the expansion targets stipulated in the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) of 69 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity for 2024 and 84 GW for 2026 are likely to be missed, given current trends, the SMC argued. “Wind energy expansion is far from repeating the expansion success of solar PV, which has already exceeded its 2024 target,” the SMC stated. 

Before a wind turbine can start feeding electricity into the grid, it requires a construction license in line with the building code and other assessment factors. Operators wanting to be part of public guaranteed remuneration schemes must participate in an auction carried out by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to determine the level of funding that will be granted. After being awarded in an auction, operators are supposed to connect their turbines to the grid within a period of 36 months. However, the BNetzA’s auctions have often failed to attract enough bidders for the auctioned capacity. “The initially planned expansion thus cannot happen,” the SMC added. The network agency has increased the auctioned volume for 2024 from 10 GW to nearly 15 GW and plans to auction at least 10 GW in the following two years.

The SMC said it would be optimistic to expect that these volumes are completely filled by bidders, pointing out that the parallel decommissioning of older wind turbines would add further pressure to keep the total installed capacity target. Even under favourable conditions, the target would thus likely be missed by 5 GW in 2024 and by 3 GW in 2026, the SMC said. Additionally, in “an even more optimistic scenario,” which assumes that no auctions are undersubscribed by 2025 and licensing is eased further or auctioned volumes increased, delays in implementation would make it difficult to meet the 2026 target. “This shows once again that efforts to increase the auctioned volumes only start to show an effect with a delay,” the non-profit media institution concluded.

Shortening implementation periods would be the only way to ensure that the targets are fulfilled, the SMC argued, adding that “since 2022, a different trend can be observed here” as implementation time had increased. Industry representatives had cited challenging weather conditions during planned construction periods and difficulties in transporting the large turbine components to the construction location as reasons for these difficulties.

The German government aims to roughly double the total capacity of onshore wind to 115 GW by 2030. With several changes to licensing requirements, the designation of land area and other measures, the government coalition has sought to facilitate the buildout of Germany’s most important renewable power source, after the sector experienced a severe slump after 2017 that previous governments did not sufficiently address. However, these changes take time to implement and will likely only show their full effect in the next years.