Bird lovers fight gas plant in eastern Germany
Date: 22-Apr-02
Country: GERMANY
Author: Vera Eckert
Hamburg-based developer Concord wants a 10-year tax exemption to press ahead with its plan to build a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) with two blocks of 1,000 megawatt (MW) capacity.
German utility EnBW bought land near the Concord site last year to have an option to build another similar unit of its own if market conditions were to turn more favourable.
"The environmentalists are suing the local planning authorities for not including them in their decision to give Concord permission for a gas plant at Lubmin," a spokesman for the Mecklenburg state's highest administrative court in Greifswald told Reuters.
"If they win ...they could demand the whole process is repeated, which could take ages," Eckhard Corsmeyer added.
The row highlights conflicts between the need to protect the habitat for birds in wetlands on the Baltic Sea Coast, the need for jobs in a remote location, and investors' wishes to exploit demand for gas-to-power generation.
"All these factors play a role and even if the investors win, they might not start the project in the short term because they might not get their hoped-for tax breaks," Corsmeyer said.
Conditions for gas tax exemption laws are still being reviewed by German and European authorities, as gas is seen as an efficient and less polluting alternative to coal plants.
But analysts say the power generation market in Germany is oversupplied, prices of imported gas are expensive because they are linked to oil, and power prices not fully profitable.
ECOLOGICAL BALANCE THREATENED
Rica Muenchberger, managing director in Mecklenburg state of national environmental group NABU, told Reuters her organisation was fighting against the location of the planned sites as their building and operations would scare birds away.
"Some 73,000 birds a day use the area in the main nesting season and if the weather is mild, it is a year-round resting place for migrating birds," she said.
NABU together with BUND, the German section of international group Friends of the Earth, wants the sites switched to former industrial locations rather than on previously untouched land.
"We're also concerned that cooling water from the plants will encourage algae growth and upset the delicate ecological balance of the Baltic Sea eco-system, which provides food for birds and fish," Muenchberger said.
She said NABU/BUND had been criticised for endangering potentially 800 jobs, "but we think it'll be maybe 50 and most of them will be for specialists, not local people," she said.
Any decision last week can be appealed against at the federal court, Corsmeyer said.
Concord was not available for immediate comment.