Wildlife concerns blunt Germany's green power efforts

Germany is expanding its powerfulness grid to assistance the modulation to renewable energies, but section residents successful immoderate areas are holding up the process implicit concerns astir wildlife.

"I americium not saying that the energy modulation is not necessary. But we don't privation these pylons," Hartmut Lindner, 75, told AFP.

Lindner has been campaigning for 15 years against a planned high-voltage powerfulness enactment successful the Schorfheide-Chorin quality reserve, a fewer kilometres from Berlin.

Energy institution 50Hertz is readying to instal astir 115 kilometres (71 miles) of caller lines betwixt the towns of Bertikow and Neuenhagen, replacing an existing web of smaller pylons.

The caller web is intended to proviso the portion with wind energy produced successful bluish Germany.

But it could airs a menace to "thousands of taxon of birds, immoderate of them endangered" successful the quality reserve, according to Lindner, a retired teacher.

Together with respective 100 local residents, Lindner started a run successful 2008 to reason the project.

After years of nationalist consultations and discussions, helium is unhappy astir the "lack of response" from 50Hertz, which has refused to alteration the way of the enactment and began operation enactment earlier this year.

12,000 kilometres

Lindner is 1 of a increasing fig of Germans warring against the operation of energy pylons adjacent their homes, a inclination that risks slowing down the modulation to renewables.

The state is readying to signifier retired some ember and atomic vigor successful the coming years, with renewables specified arsenic upwind vigor playing an progressively important relation successful keeping the lights on.

"The occupation is that upwind vigor is produced mostly successful the north, portion galore needs, particularly concern ones, are successful the south. This energy indispensable truthful beryllium transported utilizing caller networks," Dierk Bauknecht, an adept astatine the Oeko-Institut probe centre, told AFP.

To conscionable these needs, the German authorities has launched much than 1 100 caller powerfulness enactment projects implicit the past fewer years spanning 12,000 kilometres, according to authoritative figures from the system ministry.

And the inclination looks acceptable to continue, with Germany's caller ruling conjugation of the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats aiming for renewables to marque up 80 percent of the vigor premix by 2030.

'Too slow'

But the operation enactment connected caller powerfulness lines has been "too slow" owed to "procedures" and "local absorption to these projects", Bauknecht said.

According to a survey by vigor terms examination institution Check24, the German web volition beryllium expanded by lone 120 kilometres successful 2021—a 3rd little than successful 2020.

If thing is done to velocity up the process, Germany could "miss its objectives successful presumption of ecological transition", Bauknecht said.

In a bid to code the problem, Berlin introduced caller rules past twelvemonth that simplify the bureaucratic procedures required for the support of powerfulness lines and bounds the possibilities for appeal.

But Lindner and his chap campaigners, backed by biology relation NABU, inactive won a cardinal ineligible triumph this summertime starring to the impermanent suspension of operation connected a conception of the 50Hertz line.

A tribunal volition determine adjacent twelvemonth whether 50Hertz tin proceed with operation arsenic planned oregon whether it indispensable output to the campaigners' demands that it beryllium rerouted oregon moved underground to support the region's biodiversity.

Such solutions person truthful acold been ruled retired by 50Hertz, which considers them excessively expensive.

50Hertz did not instantly reply to AFP's requests for comment.

In a tract a fewer kilometres from Lindner's house, the immense pylons person already been built. But helium inactive has anticipation of redeeming the wetlands a fewer 100 metres away, on with the birds that inhabit them.

"We indispensable support this unsocial place," helium said.

---

---

© 2021 AFP