Bremerhaven offshore terminal

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Coordinates: 53 ° 31 '12 "  N , 8 ° 34' 12.9"  O The offshore terminal Bremerhaven (OTB) is a planned heavy port for wind turbines and other elements for offshore wind farms .

Tripods, foundations for wind turbines, are ready for loading in Bremerhaven
The offshore terminal makes intervention in the habitat of the Avocet required.

Bremerhaven is an important location for the offshore wind energy industry in Germany. An offshore terminal is planned in the south of the city so that the foundations, which weigh up to 1000 tons and are around 30 meters by 40 meters, as well as rotor blades with a length of 75 m can be loaded onto special ships. With a quay length of 500 m, an additional infrastructure of 25 hectares is to be created. The costs for the construction were supposed to be raised with the help of investors, but a corresponding tendering process was ended unsuccessfully in autumn 2012. The economics and port senator Martin Günthner (SPD), who was born in Bremerhaven, blamed the incumbent federal government for the failed search for investors.

The basis for the planning is, among other things, a study by Prognos AG from 2011. In this report, the market opportunities in offshore wind energy across Europe were analyzed and existing port capacities at various locations were compared. The project is currently being financed by the state of Bremen, with the hope of a return flow of funds from the port fees that have to be raised by the wind energy companies.

history

In September 2011, the Bremerhaven city administration decided to close the Bremerhaven-Luneort airfield in favor of the offshore terminal. The construction of the offshore terminal should begin in 2013; completion was already planned for 2014; the total cost was initially estimated at 200 million euros. Financing through a concession model by private investors could not be realized, so that the state of Bremen wants to cover the costs over a five-year period. According to a tight calculation, 180 million euros are now expected, of which 75 million will be generated from the port special fund. The new OTB could go into operation in 2018 at the earliest. In the spring of 2015, there were doubts from various sides that the planned port would be used to capacity with the development of offshore wind energy. In a procedure for awarding the operation of the planned port, three interested parties had registered by mid-May 2015, whereby two bidders finally withdrew their applications and justified this with a lack of profitability. The only remaining bidder is the BLG Logistics Group . This means that 50% of the income from the company would flow directly to the city of Bremen, and additional income would also indirectly benefit the state of Bremen via the financial institutions involved.

After the general election in Bremen in 2015 , funding played a role in the coalition negotiations between the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen . In a 6-point paper, the designated head of government Carsten Sieling called for the OTB: "With regard to its financing, it must be examined how the conditions for such a long-term investment are to be designed."

At the beginning of February 2016, bremenports and BLG representatives signed a contract for the 30-year concession to operate the offshore terminal . After completion, BLG is to operate the terminal on its own account and pay a usage fee to Bremen for this.

Urgent proceedings before the administrative court in Bremen

Due to a lawsuit by the nature conservation association BUND Landesverband Bremen e. V., the administrative court in Bremen had to decide on further construction work on the OTB in an urgent procedure . On May 18, 2016, the court came to the conclusion that the planning approval decision by the Senator for the Environment, Building and Transport Bremen was incorrect for two reasons:

  • Jurisdiction

According to the VG Bremen is for the plan approval process by the Federal Waterways Act , the waterway and navigation administration of the Federal had jurisdiction. In its response to a request from the FDP parliamentary group in the Bremen citizenship, the Bremen Senate referred to a letter from the then Waterways and Shipping Directorate WSD Northwest dated June 7, 2010, in which this authority "denied its competence".

  • natural reserve

The court followed the BUND's fears that u. a. the flushing of sand on the tidal flats could lead to irreversible damage to the FFH area Weser near Bremerhaven .

As part of the preliminary legal protection , the nature conservation law concerns of the BUND were weighed against the interests of the OTB operator and the further construction was stopped until the decision in the main proceedings .

Urgent proceedings before the Bremen Higher Administrative Court

The Senator for Environment, Building and Transport Bremen appealed to the Bremen Higher Administrative Court against the decision of the Administrative Court .

By decision of April 3, 2017, the court confirmed errors in the planning approval decision and is maintaining the construction freeze on the following grounds:

  • Jurisdiction

In the opinion of the OVG Bremen, the right state authority could have carried out the planning approval with the Senator for the Environment, Building and Transport Bremen if the navigability of the federal waterway is not changed by the project.

  • natural reserve

The use of areas of the FFH area Weser near Bremerhaven and the EU bird sanctuary Luneplate makes a deviation check necessary, which could have been carried out incorrectly in the plan approval procedure.

  • Water protection

The OTB leads to a loss of tidal flats and shallow water areas and deteriorates the water body overall. A deterioration is only permissible through an exception in the Water Resources Act. The weighting of the public interest in the OTB could also be incorrect here.

Main proceedings before the administrative court in Bremen

On February 7, 2019, the Bremen Administrative Court decided in the main proceedings that the planning approval decision for the establishment of the OTB is illegal and not enforceable. It may not be built for the time being. First and foremost, the intervention in the FFH area Weser near Bremerhaven is not sufficiently justified. The required predominant public interests according to the Federal Nature Conservation Act and the Water Resources Act could, however, be proven in a supplementary procedure. The administrative court has admitted the appeal to the higher administrative court.

criticism

The project has been criticized from various sides. Ecologically valuable inland tidal flats and shallow water zones in the brackish water zone of an estuary must be built over for the port. Most affected are wading birds, especially avocets, migratory fish and porpoises , which could suffer from noise pollution during construction. The NABU criticizes that the compensatory measures would "not create a single square meter of new nature", but "only old compensatory areas would be lowered with the bulldozer".

In addition, the economic goals are not suitable to justify the intervention, since sufficient capacities for loading wind turbines are already available in the Jade, Weser and Elbe areas. The assumed number of 160 loaded wind turbines per year is in any case too high. The previously potential OTB customer Siemens Windenergie is bringing its wind turbine production facility to Cuxhaven , where it can use the existing systems for heavy cargo loading.

The nature conservation association BUND has filed a lawsuit against the construction of the OTB. According to BUND managing director Martin Rode, the assumptions for the OTB are now completely utopian.

Bremen's former Senator for the Environment and Construction, Jens Eckhoff (CDU), sees “a great opportunity” for Bremerhaven as a business location. However, Eckhoff has been President of the German Foundation for the Promotion of Offshore Wind Energy since 2005, a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Windtechnik in Bremen and sits on the advisory board of Schneider Electric Deutschland GmbH.

Around 3,000 people currently work in Bremerhaven in the wind energy industry. Also at the interest group WAB e. V., the annual Windforce trade fair , the topic of OTB is discussed.

Above all, the amendments to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) repeatedly create uncertainties in the industry. In view of the reduced expansion goals of the federal government and the existing overcapacities elsewhere, for example since the construction of the little-used Cuxhaven offshore terminal, some commentators consider economic operation to be unlikely, so that critics fear another "million dollar grave" for the Bremen budget in need of renovation becomes.

In addition, the financing of the OTB appears increasingly questionable, as planned investment income from the Bremer Landesbank and the BLG Logistics Group are missing and Bremen, as a budget emergency country, is criticized by the Stability Council of the federal and state governments due to its excessive new debt in the current draft budget .

An expert opinion by Planco Consult GmbH also sees the opportunities critically. The comment of the daily newspaper Weser-Kurier , published in Bremen, accuses the Senate of unnecessarily delaying the project in the past by looking for a private investor.

Due to consolidation in the offshore wind energy market at the beginning of 2017, the originally made assumptions for the use of the OTB are no longer given.

Fundamental criticism of the OTB strategy also came from a group of economics professors in Bremen.

competitor

The Cuxhaven offshore terminal was built in 2009 with funding from the then Lower Saxony state government . Politicians hoped that the Strabag would settle there. This did not happen, however, and the terminal remained largely unused. In 2015, Siemens Windenergie decided to operate its offshore logistics from the Cuxhaven terminal. Around 1000 jobs are to be created by Siemens in Cuxhaven. The offshore terminal in Cuxhaven was finally opened in September 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from June 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wirtschaft.bremen.de
  2. ↑ http://www.bis-bremerhaven.de/prognos-studie-offshore-terminal.59794.html
  3. ↑ http://www.bremenports.de/unternehmen/unsere-kompetenzen/offshore-terminal-bremerhaven
  4. ↑ Senate finances offshore terminal. In: Weser Courier . December 4, 2012, accessed March 21, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Short distances for new offshore wind turbines . In: Daily port report from February 20, 2015, special supplement Bremische Häfen , p. 8, DVV Media Group, Hamburg 2015, ISSN  2190-8753
  6. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated June 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radiobremen.de
  7. ↑ http://www.dvz.de/rubriken/politik/single-view/nachricht/bremen-plant-weiter-mit-dem-otb.html
  8. ↑ http://www.spd-land-bremen.de/6-Punkte-Papier_von_Carsten...html
  9. ↑ Eckhard-Herbert Arndt: BLG should operate the OTB · Port and logistics service provider signs concession for 30 years . In: Daily port report from February 9, 2016, p. 14
  10. ↑ Jürgen Hinrichs: The court stops the offshore terminal in Bremerhaven. In: Weser Courier . May 18, 2016, accessed March 21, 2017 .
  11. ↑ http://www.bremische-buergerschaft.de/drs_abo/2016-07-06_Drs-19-660_87150.pdf
  12. ↑ VG Bremen , decision of May 18, 2016, 5 V 366/16
  13. ↑ Stefan Lakeband: Hope for the OTB. In: Weser Courier . February 28, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017 .
  14. ↑ OVG Bremen , decision of April 3, 2017, 1 B 126/16
  15. ↑ Offshore Terminal Bremerhaven may not be built for the time being. In: juris . Retrieved February 7, 2019 .
  16. ^ April 9, 2013 Statement on the construction of the Bremerhaven Offshore Terminal from NABU Bremen
  17. ^ Anne-Katrin Wehrmann: Another setback for the Bremerhaven offshore terminal . In: Hansa , issue 6/2016, ISSN  0017-7504 , p. 75
  18. ↑ Jürgen Hinrichs: Conservationists are suing the OTB. In: Weser Courier . November 25, 2015, accessed March 21, 2017 .
  19. ↑ http://www.weser-kurier.de/startseite_artikel,-INTERVIEW-MIT-JENS-ECKHOFF-UeBER-OFFSHORE-WINDKRAFT-_arid,1020006.html
  20. ^ Organization chart of Deutsche Windtechnik AG
  21. ↑ http://www.windforce.info/downloads/Windforce2015-Guide.pdf
  22. ↑ a b http://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/bremen-politik-wirtschaft_artikel,-Immer-mehr-Zweifel-am-Offshore-Hafen-_arid,1140191.html
  23. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated June 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radiobremen.de
  24. ↑ See also the Economic Council of the CDU e. V. - LV Bremen, http://www.wirtschaftsrat.de/wirtschaftsrat.nsf/id/offshore-terminal-bremerhaven-otb-vor-dem-aus-de
  25. ↑ http://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/bremen-politik-wirtschaft_artikel,-OTB-Finanzierung-wackelt-_arid,1389453.html
  26. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated August 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radiobremen.de
  27. ↑ http://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/bremen-politik-wirtschaft_artikel,-Gutachten-bewetzt-Chancen-fuer-OTB-kritisch-_arid,1162470.html
  28. ↑ Peter Hanuschke: looking for partners. In: Weser Courier . July 8, 2015, accessed March 21, 2017 .
  29. ↑ Klaus Wolschner: Who sows wind power, harvests heavy loads. In: taz . March 17, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2017 .
  30. ↑ https://www.weser-kurier.de/startseite_artikel,-Wie-Bremer-Wirtschaft-und-Ppolitik-innovativen-haben-sollen-_arid,1108732.html Stefan Lakebrand, How Bremen's economy and politics should become more innovative, Weser Courier April 24, 2015
  31. ↑ Klaus Wolschner: Bremen's Offshore Dreams. In: taz . September 18, 2015, accessed March 21, 2017 .
  32. ↑ OTB: "Stillborn child" . In: Daily port report of August 7, 2015, p. 3
  33. ↑ Peter Hanuschke: Cuxhaven opens new offshore terminal. In: Weser Courier. September 19, 2018, accessed July 5, 2019 .