Windpower industry needs tens of thousands of new workers in Germany

Germany needs to increase its workforce in the windpower industry for the planned doubling of installed wind power capacity by 2030, industry association BWE told news agency dpa. While this would not mean a doubling of jobs, “we are talking about several tens of thousands,” said the organisation’s managing director Wolfram Axthelm. Companies are confronted with the shortage of skilled workers, which affects almost all sectors of the German economy, writes dpa. In addition, the wind power companies are still struggling with the aftermath of the enormous staff reductions of the past few years, a consequence of the faltering expansion of wind energy.

A recent report commissioned by the Hans Böckler foundation and labour union IG Metall also found that better working conditions are a key element to reach expansion targets. Germany aims to roughly double its onshore wind capacity to 115 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 (and to 160 GW by 2040), meaning annual capacity additions will have to reach 10 GW as of 2025. With several legislative reforms last year, Germany's government started to take action to accelerate planning procedures and land designation for wind energy.

Think tank Agora Energiewende presented a package of proposals to speed up onshore wind power expansion. In the short term, around five gigawatts of wind can be connected to the grid by implementing projects that are currently blocked and ready for construction, said the organisation. In the medium term, the government had to introduce several measures to ensure that the time from the start of a project to the inauguration of a wind park can be halved from eight to four years. “The climate targets require a quadrupling of annual onshore wind power installations practically with immediate effect," said Simon Müller, Director Germany at Agora Energiewende.