Economic benefits of wind power in Germany

Wind power developments in Germany have significant economic benefits. Financial benefits, such as discounted electricity, payments to the municipality, and payments for social purposes, increase the acceptance of wind energy projects among communities . Wind energy has positive output elasticity estimates and high substitutability with nuclear power, natural gas, and coal in the German power sector. The construction of wind turbines in Germany has been supported by guaranteed feed-in tariffs, contributing to the profitability of wind energy investments. Overall, wind power in Germany provides economic benefits through job creation, value added, avoided emissions, and the potential for energy independence.

People have been using wind energy for centuries – originally to drive mechanical processes such as milling grain or pumping water. Today, it is used to generate electricity. The expansion of wind power in Germany is also gaining momentum on the high seas with offshore wind farms.Cutting-edge wind farms can now deliver as much electricity as conventional power plants – at a similar price.

Germany is making a prudent long-term investment to reduce its dependence on expensive and volatilely priced fossil fuels, particularly natural gas that is imported from Russia. Like energy efficiency upgrades or any smart investment, to reap long-term returns it is necessary to make an investment that has up-front costs. This effort enjoys very wide support among the German people, despite the efforts of the New York Times and others to paint it in shades of doom and gloom.

Pollution reductions in Germany

The reality is that, over the last decade, wind energy has allowed Germany to greatly reduce fossil fuel use and pollution, reductions that would have been even larger had the country not also greatly scaled down its use of nuclear power over that same time period. The best measurement of a country’s emissions profile is to look at changes in the amount of CO2 emitted by the electric sector for every unit of electricity produced, i.e., the emissions intensity of a country’s electric sector. One would expect that adding a zero-emission resource like wind energy to the power system would reduce the emissions-intensity of the country’s electric sector, and International Energy Agency data presented in the table below indicate that this is the case. The countries that added the most wind energy saw the greatest declines in their emissions intensity, while countries that added less wind energy (like Germany and the aggregation of all OECD Europe) saw smaller declines in their emissions intensities.

Germany risks missing its 2030 offshore wind target, industry warns :- 

By 2030, the German government wants to have 30 GW of offshore wind turbines installed in its narrow slices of the North and Baltic Seas, up from 8.5 GW today. But despite the tight timeline, few wind turbines are being commissioned and the industry is now ringing the alarm bell. Slow turbine build-out and fears of China are not the only issues plaguing the German offshore sector.

The government agency in charge of mapping the country’s oceanic economic zone, sent notice to the grid regulator that connecting offshore wind parks to electricity lines on the shore would prove more difficult than expected. According to the letter, seen by Euractiv, several areas slated to be auctioned off for development would see their grid connection delayed by up to two years – a whole 2 GW will be connected in late 2031 instead of mid-2029, with other delays being less immediately impactful.