“The European industry is still there, not everything comes from China”

Karsten Porm, Managing Director of Eno Energy Systems GmbH, talks about the challenges facing his company as a small, independent German manufacturer of wind turbines.

What do you need as an entrepreneur to make your business successful?

Karsten Porm: Simply planning security. The heavily criticized traffic light coalition has done a very good job in my opinion. The positive things it initiated must not be destroyed now. This allows us to smoothly process the numerous approvals we have received. Specifically, we are fully booked for the next three years with orders totaling several hundred megawatts from approved projects. In Germany, we have 300 megawatts of approved projects. If we can process them properly with our small factory, which is designed for approximately 150 to 200 megawatts, that's enough for me – plus customer orders, of course. But that's perhaps asking too much these days...

In times of war…

Karsten Porm: Maybe I should switch production to tanks. Or even better: drones. That has a lot to do with aerodynamics, and we're familiar with that...

The idea of ​​resilience requires that we bring production back to Europe…

Karsten Porm: Of course, we're pursuing an excellent strategy with wind power in Germany: Eliminating the energy supply from wind power is something that would require a lot of effort in the event of war. I think that's great, but the idea probably hasn't yet reached politicians.

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After 9/11, there was the idea that terrorists would not be able to fly so close to our nuclear power plants if we built wind turbines all around them…

Karsten Porm: A decentralized energy supply like the one we have in Germany isn't so bad. But regarding resilience: European industry is still there, not everything comes from China yet. We at Eno are very Europe-focused, which is why we have limitations. We're about as economical as Enercon, who also source a lot from Europe and are therefore relatively expensive. We could manage with Europe except for rotor blade suppliers. For the 4.8-megawatt turbines, we even source the blades from Europe, from Andalusia. And otherwise, our main supplier is a European, LM, which manufactures in China. They could also bring the molds to Poland. LM still has production capacity there and in Spain. The industry is still there, but we're often the last customer. I'm the only wind customer at my generator supplier in Dresden. The others have all left. It's similar with gearboxes. We still have Flender in Germany. ZF also offers us gearboxes, but they're made in China. There is still European production, but it is in extreme decline.

But at what price can you have something manufactured in Europe? Planners would have to be willing to pay 20 percent more, right?

Karsten Porm: Not quite 20, but something like that. Every component from China is cheaper – including transport. For large, heavy components like towers, the advantage diminishes. Some manufacturers source components from Vietnam. I get generators from India and Saxony, although India is obviously cheaper. But regarding resilience: If planners are willing to pay for it and are supported through an appropriate compensation system, everything can be reversed.

How do you assess the old traffic light government from today’s perspective?

Karsten Porm: I'm a fan of the traffic light coalition. First, they handled the war situation with very minimal negative effects. Habeck suddenly found himself in Qatar. Ideologically contradictory to his own stance, but this ensured security of supply. And then, they did us wind turbine operators a tremendous service. Before the traffic light coalition collapsed, the draft law for gas-fired power plants was published, for balancing the situation with photovoltaics and wind. And that's basically it.

A positive example that Germany can also accelerate?

Karsten Porm: With the LNG terminals, they've shown that speed is possible. And with us, the wind industry, it happened quickly, too. Habeck was just at the helm when the onshore wind law was introduced in 2021/22.

The whole thing must then also penetrate down to the communities.

Karsten Porm: Strangely enough, that also worked here in Mecklenburg. The two state secretaries in the Ministry of Economic Affairs sent two A4 pages to the offices, the districts, and the planning authorities, with instructions on how to implement this in practice. And suddenly, there was approval for projects outside of suitable areas, something that had been unthinkable for the last 30 years. We only had to follow the specifications in the document. It stated which distances still had to be maintained. There were also a kind of instructions for the authorities.

What impact will the AfD’s influx have?

Karsten Porm: I find it interesting how Alice Weidel changed her mind. I heard her ranting about the "windmills of shame." And she backtracked pretty quickly, because maybe some property owner who votes for the AfD or donates €100,000 to the AfD every year called her and said, "Here, girl, not like that!"

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