Germany's wind power expansion stalls on the roads
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[September 07, 2023]
By Riham Alkousaa
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's wind power expansion is facing an
unexpected roadblock: builders need permits to transport the heavy
turbines down the country's roads, and they are waiting months to get
them.
With a backlog of more than 15,000 applications for approvals, companies
say their projects are heavily delayed, with the costs of prolonged
warehousing for steel tower segments, generators and blades running into
the millions.
"Assuming nothing changes, it could cost 115 million euros extra by the
end of the year," Felix Rehwald, a spokesperson for wind turbine
manufacturer Enercon, told Reuters.
Transport permits are needed to drive heavy loads over bridges and
highways. Sometimes structures and road signs need dismantling, and
police escorts are needed for some loads, while others can only be sent
at night.
"It is currently one of the most pressing challenges for us and our
competitors," Rehwald added.
Delays in securing permits were costing the company thousands of euros
per day, Rehwald said, adding that bottlenecks could only get tighter as
wind construction ramps up towards the middle of next year.
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Germany aims to obtain 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by
2030, 115 gigawatts of which should come from onshore wind, but a lack
of transport permits endanger that goal.
Nordex, a global leader in wind turbine manufacturing, told Reuters that
parking spots for its lorries are too scarce and that the cost of
permits has risen as much as tenfold, with a spokesperson talking of
"massive delays and significant costs."
The cost of applications had jumped to more than 1,000 euros per permit
in 2021 from 100 euros, Nordex said. But permits were so rigid in their
scope that companies often made multiple applications to cover for
different eventualities.
"I can't apply for a transport permit and tomorrow say: 'I'll drive the
green truck instead of the red', because a new permit is needed," Kai
Westphal, a regional head of transport at Wind turbine maker Vestas,
told Reuters.
Some 150 permits are needed on average for transporting a wind turbine,
100 to 120 for cranes, and 60 for turbine components, a study by
engineering association VDMA published last year showed.
Without a single law regulating heavy load transport, each federal state
requires different documents, the study added.
Documents are submitted using software that dates from 2007 and
according to general guidelines that date back to 1992 but each
authority has its own administrative regulations for permit
applications, VDMA researcher Sebastian Steul said.
"We need a geo-information system as soon as possible that combines the
handling of all processes related to large and heavy transport that can
be used by both the industry and the authorities," Steul said.
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![](../images/090723PIX/2023-09-07T075936Z_3_LYNXMPEJ8609V_RTROPTP_4_GERMANY-ENERGY-WINDPOWER_small.JPG)
A view shows a nacelle of a wind turbine on a truck for heavy
haulage being transported near a wind farm, in Biegen, Germany
August 31, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Sep/07/images/ads/current/graue_lda_ENCLAVE3169preowned_081423.jpg)
The steep rise in the number of applications resulting from the wind
power ramp-up is contributing to delays, as is the poor condition of
some bridges and roads and different interpretations of the
regulations by authorities, he said.
A 2021 restructuring of the authority that examines the applications
has complicated the problem, companies said, blaming untrained and
unresponsive staff and a new software tool the government-owned
Autobahn GmbH company uses for examining applications.
Autobahn GmbH said approvals were the responsibility of federal
states and it only provided an expert opinion on navigability of a
requested route.
The government-owned company said it was doing everything to speed
up the process but examining the transport of wind turbines' rotor
blades was particularly demanding due to their extraordinary length.
A nationwide, standardized and largely automated process should be
in place by the end of 2023, it said.
Germany's government on Wednesday announced plans for a raft of
measures designed to stimulate the economy by reducing bureaucracy,
speeding up approval processes for new construction and digitizing
citizens' access to key government services.
The so-called Germany Pact sets out a range of goals to be achieved
in consultation with powerful regional governments including
swifter, online consultation processes for wind farms and transport
and data networks, a government document showed.
In the meantime, processing each permit will take up to three months
in Germany, compared with an average of two to three weeks in the
Netherlands and around 10 days in Denmark.
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Having specially trained drivers and pilots for the entire fleet of
such big deliveries has accelerated the process in Denmark as
authorities don't require a police escort for each transfer any
more, said Morten Arnskov Boejesen, a senior advisor for
Confederation of Danish Industry.
The Danish Road Directorate took over this responsibility from the
police in Oct. 2021 and both the industry and the authority seem to
be pleased with how the process is being handled, said to Soren
Andersen, Area manager in The Danish Road Directorate.
"It's definitely easier in Denmark; you get an application through
in a week … we can only dream of this here," Westphal added.
(Additional reporting by Johannes Gotfredsen-Birkebaek in Copenhagen
and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Writing by Riham Alkousaa; Editing
by Thomas Escritt, Alexandra Hudson)
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