Germany is expanding its electricity grid to favor the transition to renewable energy, but people in some rural areas are delaying the process due to the possible impact on wildlife.
“I’m not saying the energy transition is not necessary. But we don’t want these electrical wire towers,” Hartmut Lindner, 75, told AFP.
This man has been opposing for 15 years a high-voltage line designed in the Schorfheide-Chorin nature reserve, a few kilometers from Berlin, to supply the region with wind energy produced in northern Germany.
The 50Hertz company plans to install 115 kilometers of new lines between the municipalities of Bertikow and Neuenhagen, which will replace an existing network of smaller towers.
For this retired professor, the project threatens “thousands of bird species, some of them endangered” that inhabit the nature reserve.
With hundreds of neighbors in the area, Lindner launched a campaign against the project in 2008.
After years of public consultations and discussions, he is outraged at the “lack of response” by 50Hertz, which refuses to change the line’s design and began construction this year.
Like Lindner, more and more Germans are fighting the construction of electrical towers near their homes, a move that threatens to slow the transition to renewable energy.
Europe’s leading economy wants to move away from coal and nuclear power in the coming years, and the push for renewable energies such as wind will play an important role in enabling this transition.
“The problem is that wind energy is largely produced in the north, while a large part of the demand, especially industrial, is in the south. This electricity must be transported using new networks”, explains Dierk Bauknecht, from the Oeko-Institut research center to AFP.
To meet these needs, the German government has launched more than 100 new projects, with more than 12,000 kilometers of power lines in recent years, according to data from the Ministry of Economy.
And the trend seems to continue with the new government coalition between social democrats, environmentalists and liberals, which wants to increase the contribution of renewables to 80% of the energy mix.
But installing these lines was “very slow” due to “procedures” and “local resistance to these projects,” Bauknecht said.
According to an energy price comparison study by Check24, the German network will only expand by 120 kilometers in 2021, a third less than in 2020.
If nothing is done to speed up this implementation, Germany “could not achieve its goals in terms of ecological transition”, warns Bauknecht.
See too
+ Horoscope: check today’s forecast for your sign
+ Video: Driver leaves Tesla car on autopilot and sleeps on SP highway
+ Food stamps: understand what changes with new rules for benefit
+ See which were the most stolen cars in SP in 2021
+ Expedition identifies giant squid responsible for ship wreck in 2011
+ Everything you need to know before buying a crockpot
+ Discovered in Armenia most eastern aqueduct of the Roman Empire
+ US Agency warns: never wash raw chicken meat
+ Passenger attacks and pulls out two stewardess teeth
+ Aloe gel in the drink: see the benefits
+ Lemon-squeezing trick becomes a craze on social media
+ Lake Superior: the best freshwater wave in the world?
#Germanys #green #transition #collides #fears #biodiversity #ISTOÉ #MONEY