WWEA and BWE call upon IEA to take into account the basic economic characteristics of wind energy investment and to recognise the indispensable contribution of renewable energy to security of energy supply and climate protection 

Bonn/Berlin (WWEA/BWE) – The International Energy Agency has published a report which criticises the German energy policies and recommends to change from the successful renewable energy law, the current feed-in tariff, to a quota-based certificate scheme. WWEA and BWE reject this proposal which would endanger the success of the wind industry in Germany and beyond.

With more than one fourth of the global wind capacity, Germany is worldwide the leading wind energy country. This success is due to a very comprehensive legislation which takes into account the special characteristics of wind and renewable energy investment by offering a fixed feed-in tariff for a guaranteed period of time. The German legislation has served as an example for many other countries in the world which aim at building up their own wind industry.

In the recently published report on energy policies in Germany, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognises the successful implementation of wind energy in the country. However and in contradiction to this, the IEA suggests in the same report to change the successful promotion scheme from feed-in tariff to quota system. Thus, the IEA ignores unfortunately the basic economic and political preconditions of a successful implementation of wind technology on a large scale. Also the IEA ignores the failure of the quota systems in countries like Sweden or the United Kingdom which have led to much higher remuneration prices than under the German feed-in legislation but at the same time have only led to small numbers of new installations.

Already in 2005, the European Commission recognised the effectiveness and efficiency of the German legislation in comparison with the other EU countries. The Commission stated in the report on the support of electricity from renewable energy sources: ”In the case of wind power, the green certificate systems show a big gap between generation and support (…) all countries with an effectiveness higher than the EU average use feed-in tariffs. This type of system has the best performance for wind energy. (…) The most effective systems for wind energy are currently the feed-in tariff systems in Germany, Spain and Denmark.”

Stefan Gsänger, Secretary General of WWEA: “Unfortunately with the new report and especially with the recommendations on renewable energy legislation, the IEA is in line with those that try to stop or delay the rapid growth of the wind industry. Germany still is a locomotive accelerating the wind energy utilisation worldwide and a change of legislation as suggested by the IEA would retard that function, thus creating major problems for wind energy on the global scale.”

Hermann Albers, President of BWE: “While IEA applauds the German success story in boosting renewable energy the agency recommends to abandon the promotion system which was the main driver for it. This is absurd. We can find no facts in the IEA report which support this recommendation. The findings of the European Commission have been ignored as well. Such poor analysis endangers the image of IEA as an independent and objective institution.”

Further information:

World Wind Energy Association WWEA: www.wwindea.org

 German Wind Energy Association BWE www.wind-energie.de