The German Wind Energy Offshore Association (BWO) has hit back at claims the trade body intends to position itself against marine nature conservation in the election campaign.
BWO’s managing director Stefan Thimm (pictured) said that NABU is misinterpreting the group’s political demands in the run-up to the Bundestag elections.
“We are concerned with lower costs for grid expansion through optimized land use planning.
“This reduces the costs of the energy transition and thus the price of electricity, thus advancing climate protection.
“More climate protection, in turn, protects ecosystems on land and at sea.
“The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency decides which areas are used for offshore wind.”
In addition to calling for more land for offshore wind energy, NABU had stated the BWO was also calling for dismantling of environmental standards and the cost-effective laying of cables through the marine protected area “Sylter Außenriff”. NABU head of Marine Conservation Kim Detloff said: “As a consequence of slipstream effects and yield losses due to far too dense development of the North Sea with wind turbines, established planning and environmental criteria are now to be abolished.
“This no longer seems to be about nature-friendly climate protection, but profit maximization.
“The damage to ecosystems is getting completely out of hand.
“It does not need more, but less pollution of the North Sea and Baltic Sea. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services are calling for joint measures for climate and nature conservation, parts of politics and industry in Germany are turning ecological allies into opponents.
“We need a new marine spatial planning that focuses on ecological criteria.”
Thimm said that the BWO continues to advocate that the environmental impact assessment for offshore wind farms be maintained.
“We reject the plans of the incumbent federal government to abolish these checks in the implementation of the EU Directive RED III,” he said, adding, “in order to understand the effects of wind farms on the distribution of guillemots and razorbills in the German North Sea, we commissioned a study by the renowned environmental institutes IBL Umweltplanung and BioConsult SH.
“At the end of 2024, this came to the conclusion that the behaviour of guillemots and razorbills near offshore wind farms shows strong seasonal and regional differences.
“Compared to other studies, a blanket large-scale avoidance could not be confirmed.”