By Maximilian Roth
China is the world leader in the manufacture of wind and solar power systems. Does the energy transition therefore threaten a new dependency on China?
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (53, Alliance 90 / The Greens) has big goals: by 2030, 80 percent of German electricity consumption should be covered by renewable energies.
However, this requires a massive expansion of wind and solar power, because in 2021 the share of renewables in gross electricity consumption was still 41 percent.
In addition, due to the increasing electrification of mobility (e-cars, battery factories), heating (heat pumps) and digitization, the power consumption of Germans is also increasing.
According to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, electricity consumption will increase from the current 570 TWh to 658 TWh by 2030 – and electricity consumption is expected to continue to rise thereafter.
To put it plainly: In order for Germany to be able to get out of coal and nuclear power at the same time and also reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas, a large number of wind power and solar power plants will have to be built in Germany over the next seven years.
But this threatens a new dependency, namely from China!
The Middle Kingdom is a world leader in the manufacture of wind and solar power systems. For a long time, the proponents of the energy transition said: “The sun doesn’t send any bills” – but they had made their calculations without Beijing.
“What we notice is that the dependence on China in photovoltaics has increased enormously. Around 80 percent of the components come from China, with individual components it’s even 95 percent,” says Joachim Bühler (44), managing director and member of the executive committee of the TÜV-Verband eV
A windmill is reflected in a photovoltaic system of a solar park Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa +++ dpa picture radio +++
There is not much left of the once flourishing German solar power industry: in the German “Solar Valley” in Bitterfeld (Saxony-Anhalt) there is a hangover today, with solar cell manufacturers employing more than 3000 people at times.
The EEG levy to promote renewable energies gradually developed into a subsidy for Chinese solar cell production. Because of the cheap Chinese competition, the German manufacturers went bankrupt one after the other. Today, 80 percent of all solar cells worldwide come from China.
Economy Ministry confirms China dependency
When asked by BILD, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Economics conceded: “There is currently a significant dependence on China for solar modules.” pick up”.
Robert Habeck (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa
But how is this going to succeed in the next seven years?
The fact is: things are not looking much better for wind energy. According to an evaluation by the Energy Economics Institute at the University of Cologne (EWI), which was prepared for the Handelsblatt, 5.8 wind turbines with an average output of 4.2 megawatts must be built every day between 2023 and 2029 in order to reach the 80 percent target reach the federal government.
This would be an enormous increase compared to the average for the years 2010 to 2021, in which an average of only 3.5 wind turbines with a nominal output of 2.8 megawatts were erected per day.
Wind turbines in Brandenburg Photo: Ralf Gunther
There is a risk of a gap in the power supply.
Although there are still two major manufacturers of wind turbines in Europe, the German-Spanish group Siemens Gamesa and Vestas from Denmark, they too are having problems with increasing competition from China and the war in Ukraine.
According to business consultancy S&P Global Market Intelligence, both manufacturers have made losses this year and have had to raise prices massively to cover their costs – but this has led to fewer orders and makes orders from the Far East increasingly attractive for wind turbine operators.
And business is booming in China: in 2020 alone, more wind turbines were connected to the grid than have ever been built in Germany. Seven of the ten largest wind turbine manufacturers now come from China: Goldwind, Envision, Mingyang, Shanghai Electric, Windey, CRRC and Sany now share the home market almost entirely among themselves.
In addition to cheap labour, the Chinese manufacturers have another competitive advantage: the metals of the so-called rare earths, which have become indispensable for modern wind turbines, come almost exclusively from China.
Germany “blackmailable”
“When it comes to raw materials, Germany can be blackmailed,” said BDI President Siegfried Russwurm in the presence of Robert Habeck at the BDI raw materials summit in October of this year.
Russwurm’s clear warning: The dependence of the German economy on China for raw materials required for industry outweighs its dependence on Russia for energy.
Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries Photo: picture alliance/dpa
It takes “a real effort” to reduce dependence on China for raw materials.
China has already proven that it does not shy away from drawing the resource card and blackmailing other countries:
After Japan arrested Chinese fishermen in 2010 who had repeatedly illegally entered the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, which belong to Japan, China stopped exports of rare earths to Japan for several weeks – with serious consequences for the local industry.