Energy - Schleswig-Holstein wants to significantly expand wind energy
Significantly more wind turbines are to be spinning between the North Sea and Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein by 2030. The black-green state government wants to increase the installed wind power capacity on land to 15 gigawatts. "In order to achieve this goal, we have to intervene much more strongly than before in protection issues in order to designate additional priority areas," said Interior Minister Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU) on Tuesday.
To date, two percent of the state's land area has been designated as areas for wind turbines. In future, three percent is to be designated. This corresponds to an additional area of 160 square kilometers. By way of comparison, this is significantly more than the city of Kiel, which, according to the state capital, covers just under 119 square kilometers.
As of the beginning of July, there were 3119 wind turbines turning on land in the north. They had a total output of 7.9 gigawatts. A further 369 sites have already been approved. They will increase the wind power output by 1.9 gigawatts. According to the state government, this means that the target of producing ten gigawatts of onshore wind power will already be achieved by 2025. In their coalition agreement last year, the CDU and Greens agreed to expand onshore wind power to 15 gigawatts. Five gigawatts more is equivalent to the output of several nuclear power plants.
The black-green coalition wants to draw up new regional plans for wind turbines by 2027 at the latest. With the existing plans, the aim was to achieve 10 gigawatts. The distances between turbines and houses are to remain unchanged - they will continue to be 400 meters from individual houses and 800 and 1000 meters from villages and towns.
On the other hand, there are interventions in landscape and species protection as well as monument protection. "The expansion of renewable energies is in the overriding public interest," said Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens). "We have made compromises in weighing up the protected goods in favor of climate protection." Areas of particular importance for nature conservation would continue to be kept free of wind turbines. "Climate protection and nature conservation are two sides of the same coin."
Specifically, the coalition no longer excludes landscape conservation areas across the board when designating priority areas. It will adjust the distance to forests depending on their ecological value. The protection areas around breeding grounds for large birds will be partially reduced. There are also changes to nature conservation areas. The government expects to publish the detailed criteria with the draft of the new wind plans in the second quarter of 2024.
In principle, already designated wind power areas are to be retained. In future, wind turbines will no longer have to be three times the height of residential buildings and five times the height of settlements. There are also no height limits. In future, old wind turbines may also be replaced by newer, more powerful turbines (repowering) outside the priority areas. However, this must not adversely affect public interests or spatial planning objectives.
According to earlier figures from the Northern Statistics Office, around 29.8 million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity were generated in Schleswig-Holstein in 2022, 24.2 percent more than in the previous year. 26 million MWh from renewable energies. According to the statisticians, this covered around 170% of the state's electricity consumption (around 15.2 million MWh). Onshore wind turbines alone generated 14.2 million MWh, almost as much as the country consumes in total.
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Source: www.stern.de
