News Digest Item
15 May 2018

Germany must prepare for “wind turbine decommissioning wave”

Top Agrar

Many of Germany’s 28,000-odd onshore wind turbines will soon meet the end of their guaranteed 20-year feed-in tariff lifespan, meaning that the country can expect “a decommissioning wave” in the sector, Hinrich Neumann writes for Top Agrar. The Institute for Integrated Production Hannover estimates that about 2.4 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity will lose eligibility for guaranteed payments annually, and a retrofitting of older turbines with newer models is not always possible, Neumann says. In 2020 alone, about 4,500 turbines could be retired because their operation will no longer be economically viable, Neumann explains, adding that better technologies for recycling turbines and their components are needed to ensure the sustainability of wind power generation.

Read the article in German here.  

See the CLEW factsheet German onshore wind power for more information.

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” . They can be copied, shared and made publicly accessible by users so long as they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Journalism for the energy transition

Get our Newsletter
Join our Network
Find an interviewee