Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has vowed to dismantle wind parks and wind turbines should it win power in the upcoming presidential elections in February, aligning itself with similar sentiments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. AfD asserts in its election platform that it “rejects the further expansion of wind energy” and has called for cuts to renewable subsidies.
German offshore-wind group BWO has hit back at AfD’s anti-wind policy, saying Putin would be the biggest beneficiary of such a move. AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel has also tried to walk back that position, saying her earlier anti-wind comments referred to a local matter in the state of Hesse.
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Despite frequent criticisms of wind turbines, over the past two decades, wind power has been the leading utility-scale renewable power source, generating 2,311 TWh of electricity in 2023 compared to 1,632 TWh by solar farms. However, over the past five years, solar generation has grown twice as quickly as wind generation in large part due to lower costs and faster construction times of solar farms compared to their wind brethren. Global solar capacity increased by 188% from 2018 to 2023 compared to 80% growth in wind capacity over the timeframe.
