The federal government presented its new port strategy today. For the time being, the strategy only contains a collection of measures, but no financing plans yet.
On this occasion, the onshore and offshore wind energy associations, the OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY Foundation and the Hamburg Renewable Energy Cluster are appealing to the government to take the needs of the energy transition into account in the port strategy:
“The strategy presented today to strengthen the competitiveness of Germany as a port location contains many important and targeted measures, including accelerated and simplified space provision and approval procedures as well as initiatives to attract and train skilled workers.
Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the federal government is not living up to its responsibility in relation to its most important goal of making ports sustainable hubs of the energy transition. The energy transition has been politically decided by the federal government and represents a national task that threatens to be significantly slowed down without the necessary port capacity being expanded.
In the coalition agreement, the federal government committed itself to the fact that the federal and state governments bear joint responsibility for the necessary port infrastructure. The port location of Cuxhaven is particularly important in the short term in this context. Around 80 percent of all rotor blades installed in Germany land in Cuxhaven, both for onshore and offshore systems. We have already pointed out several times that capacity in Cuxhaven is already running low. Cuxhaven is the only German deep-sea port that has already received a planning approval to expand its areas; Only here can the urgently needed capacities be expanded quickly. However, the financing of the project has not yet been finally clarified because the federal government is not committed to its task here.
The federal government must take greater account of the needs of the energy transition. “It must now quickly create a coherent and stable financing basis for the port strategy that sustainably supports the goals it has set itself from the coalition agreement.”, comment the associations Bundesverband WindEnergie (BWE), Bundesverband Windenergie Offshore (BWO), WAB and Wind Energy Network (WEN), the non-profit foundation OFFSHORE-WINDENERGIE and the Hamburg Renewable Energy Cluster.
