Germany's motorways need modernising: Who will pay to transport giant wind turbines?

The need to modernise road infrastructure is one of the issues raised in connection with the planned construction of nuclear power plants and the transport of oversized components. However, wind farm construction creates similar needs, as turbines grow ever taller and their blades ever longer. Northern Germany faces a similar issue, as its ports are the entry point for most of the blades imported into the country. The German federal government and its ministries, however, cannot agree on who should bear these additional costs.

As with nuclear power plants, where the capacity of new units has often increased over recent decades to benefit from economies of scale, the same trend is evident in wind power. Taller turbines with longer blades, however, place greater demands on transport. According to several federal states in northern Germany, local motorways—or rather, their exits—are too small to accommodate the transport of today's giant blades. Motorway entrances and exits will therefore need to be widened, but it is not yet clear who should pay for the modifications.

"The problem is that motorway exits in the hinterland of seaports were not designed to accommodate the requirements of rotor blades up to 90 metres long," Bremen's transport ministry said, according to Clean Energy Wire.

Almost all wind turbine blades entering Germany arrive through ports in the north of the country, from where they are transported by road. Inadequate road infrastructure can, however, delay the construction of new wind farms and also lead to higher costs.

"We must prevent components from getting stuck at narrow exits. We have to fix this," Lower Saxony's transport minister Olaf Lies told dpa.

The key question, however, is who should pay to modernise the motorways in the region. Bremen's transport ministry says the modifications serve the public good and are necessary for the transformation of Germany's energy sector. It argues that the federal government should therefore bear the costs. According to the news website, however, the federal transport ministry disagrees and is rejecting these demands.

German industry associations are also highlighting the need to modernise the country's roads and motorways. They say that, in the short term, complications associated with transporting wind turbine components could jeopardise renewable energy development targets.