Germany’s Compounding Energy Woes: Even Wind Power Industry Is “Sliding Into Crisis”

Germany’s Blackout News here reports that not only is Germany’s energy supply faltering profoundly, but so is its wind industry as well, reporting  that it is “sliding into a crisis”.

Gloomy outlook also for Germany’s wind energy industry. Photo by P. Gosselin

Wind energy is supposed to step in and play a key role in supplying Germany with energy as other sources get cut off. But that too is not going to plan.

“Nordex is closing its plant in Rostock, Siemens Gamesa is sliding deep into the red and at Vestas the workforce is on strike,” reports Blackout News.

The German government aims to solve the country’s massive energy woes by doubling wind energy output over the next decade or so, but wind parks just aren’t getting built and orders are “collapsing sharply”, falling by “more than a third in the third quarter” at Siemens Gamesa year-on-year.

The result: thousands of lost jobs.

Blackout News cites “incalculable record raw material prices and supply chain problems” and a lack of profitability. Companies like Nordex are closing plants in Germany and moving production offshore to places like China.

The unplanned lack of wind energy expansion in combination with the massive supply stop of Russian natural gas is acting to further compound the German government’s problems as it struggles to keep the country supplied with energy while it suicidally pushes for the electrification of transportation and the closure of nuclear and coal power plants.

“Siemens Gamesa made a loss of almost one billion euros in the past fiscal year and sales fell by four percent,” according to Blackout News. “Vestas has already made a loss of just under one billion euros, compared with a profit of 135 million euros a year earlier.”

Government reforms have  to have “driven turbine manufacturers into cutthroat competition” and the German market “has collapsed in recent years,” Blackout News adds. “For the market leaders Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex and Enercon, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find financiers willing to invest in wind turbines.




8 responses to “Germany’s Compounding Energy Woes: Even Wind Power Industry Is “Sliding Into Crisis””

  1. voza0db

    In the UK!
    One Of England’s Largest Solar Farms Goes Bust After Borrowing £655 Million
    Toucan Energy Holdings 1 Ltd., based in Essex, Southern England, has gone into administration after racking up a whopping half a billion pounds in debt, according to a new Bloomberg report.

    The company owns 53 solar farms across the country and had borrowed £655 million from Thurrock Council over the course of four years to try and finance its expansion, the report notes.

    I guess they just need another round of QQE/ZIRP/NIRP to fix it!

    1. watersider

      How did a local council have £655M to squander on a ponzi scheme

  2. John Hultquist

    Someone may be working on the many implications in the manner of the models
    pioneered by Wassily Leontief.
    Economic sectors draw from or feed other sectors. Think of looking backward at the supply chain. Wind towers need steel. Fewer towers –> less steel needed. Less steel ordered –> mining slows, and transport, and purchase of big machines. Spending by workers slows because of fewer hours worked — pubs and retail outlets take in less.
    Okay, maybe not the pubs!

  3. Even the wind power industry is “sliding into crisis” – Will it work? - News7g

    […] From NoTricksZone […]

  4. pochas94

    You can’t fix stupid, but you can finance it. That’s what climate scams are for.

  5. Graeme No.3

    Here in South Australia (blacked out in 2016) we have been warned that we may have another State wide blackout today, because it will be sunny.
    We had a big storm less than a week ago which brought trees down onto powerlines especially the connector to Victoria. The result is that there is nowhere to get rid of excess electricity should renewables actually work.
    South Australia has regular periods when grid demand drops to near zero because of household solar panels. This doesn’t mean “100% renewables” as claimed by Greens ( for as long as 55 minutes) because there is always some gas fired generation (to stabilise frequency, guard against clouds), which with demand so low has to be exported to Victoria (at a loss).
    Equally when renewables fail to deliver the State imports electricity from Victoria which they don’t sell at a loss.
    The “solution” according to our politicians is more renewables and another interconnector. As Einstein said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

  6. J. R.

    “…. it is becoming increasingly difficult to find financiers willing to invest in wind turbines.”

    COP 27 is full of millionaires and billionaires. What are they doing with all that money?

  7. Gwenda Marshall

    Why is Australia racing towards fully renewables? Reading what is happening in Germany and England plus other European countries, it is a disaster.
    Even last year in their winters people perished because they could not afford heating etc. How many more will die because of this race .

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