The small hydroelectric power station Schwaigerloh1: 160 kilowatts with a head of 5.7 meters
Image: Maria Irl
Climate Minister Habeck no longer wants to subsidize small hydropower plants. The damage they caused to nature would be disproportionate to the amount of electricity produced. The operators feel pilloried. For them it is about a piece of cultural history and family tradition.
Small hydropower – the term itself sounds so cute and natural that you can’t really have anything against it, right? Her friends in Bavaria include CSU boss Markus Söder and his deputy in the state government, Hubert Aiwanger from the Free Voters. Both have recently missed no opportunity to commit to small hydropower, which is particularly important for Bavaria. Reason: the intention of the Green Minister of Climate, Robert Habeck, to no longer promote this form of electricity generation through the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
Timo Frasch
Political correspondent in Munich.
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On the other hand, the representatives of small hydropower are also mobilizing, such as the Association of Hydropower Plants in Bavaria. Its chairman Fritz Schweiger, together with his cousin Franz Schweiger, runs several small plants, four of them in Oberding, a community on the border to the Erdinger Moos. When we visit there, Schweiger immediately makes it clear that small-scale hydropower is a highly complex matter. Everything is connected to everything. In the end, however, he will deliver the “whole puzzle”. You will see “that what is currently happening with hydropower is not quite right”.