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Blowing hot and cold over wind power

DPA, SYLT, GERMANY
Wednesday, Jun 11, 2003, Page 16

A windpower park offshore from Denmark is a vision of things to come, according to the wind generation industry. But some environmentalists are worried about the effects on the marine eco-system by such facilities and have voiced opposition to the first such offshore park planned for Germany. PHOTO: DPA

In an ironic twist, two major German environmentalist groups have raised their voices against what is arguably the cleanest source of alternative energy -- a wind power park -- in what could have ramifications for the wind engineering sector.

The controversy is over Germany's first offshore wind power park planned some 30km west of the scenic North Sea island of Sylt. The dispute is also driving a wedge within the ranks of the country's environmentalists and the Environment Ministry in Berlin.

While two ecology groups -- BUND and NABU -- have expressed their opposition to the park, the best-known group, Greenpeace, says it has no quarrel with the project plans.

BUND (Alliance for Environment and Nature Preservation in Germany) and NABU (Nature Preservation Alliance) are arguing that further environmental impact studies should be undertaken before the Butendiek wind power park can be erected.

The groups say they fear the effects on whales and seals which migrate through the shallow waters west of Sylt.

Their objections have come as a welcome development for some quarters on the island who fear that the wind power park could affect the scenic seascape and thereby hurt tourism.

But Greenpeace expert Sven Teske and Environment Minister Juergen Trittin of the environmentalist Greens party dismiss the worries and warn about posing too many demands on such projects.

"When you post maximum demands in the area of nature preservation, it could mean the end of protecting the climate," Teske said in a reference to the benefits to air quality in the form of reduced carbon dioxide emissions from wind power parks.

Greenpeace also favors the Butendiek project because it would provide a model to be used "to investigate offshore technology itself as well as its effects on the marine environment", Teske added.

Trittin, through a spokesman, said that the Environment Ministry foresees no adverse effects on the marine environment. Trittin had already approved the project, in a sea area which had been set aside as a commercial zone, so the chances of NABU and BUND to stop the project were extremely narrow.

Under the plans, the Butendiek wind power park would cover 42km2, with 80 wind generators, each at 3 megawatts installed capacity, towering some 140m above the water. The facility would meet the electricity needs of 200,000 households.

The stakes are great for the future of Germany's wind power industry, which is quickly running out of room for wind parks. In a densely populated country with a population of over 80 million, suitable land space for new wind parks is now hard to find.

There are now upwards of 12,500 wind generators dotting the German countryside, making Germany the world leader in wind power generation with an installed capacity of more than 12,000 MW, or around 25 percent of the world total, according to the German Wind Energy Association BWE in Osnabrueck.

Offshore will soon be the only place left to go for any further major expansion of the sector, proponents say. Ample room and plenty of favorable winds make for a huge potential which dwarfs that offered on land, they say.

Sea-based wind parks open the prospect of hundreds of millions of megawatts of electricity production and cover a full 15 per cent of Germany's electrical requirements, according to an internal strategy paper in the Environment Ministry in Berlin.

But offshore wind power parks present formidable technological, engineering, financing and ecological and logistical hurdles.

Some 30 such wind power parks off Germany's North Sea or Baltic Sea shores are in the early planning stages. The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency reports that 29 applications have been filed for wind parks outside the 12 nautical mile (22km) zone.

As with the land-based wind power parks, aesthetic worries are raised about the projected offshore wind facilities -- will they ruin the view? One executive of the Butendiek offshore wind park says no.

"From Sylt, the wind park will be visible only during clear weather a few days of the year," said Wolfgang Paulsen of the electricity company in the coastal city of Husum.
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