Smalltown Klettwitz lies at the very heart of Germany’s Lusatia region. Lignite used to be mined here for decades. The bucket-wheel excavators have left gaping scars across the landscape.
But the country is reaching a turning point: Germany is now getting serious about ending coal burning. And Klettwitz is transforming into a frontrunner in the countrys race to handle the climate crisis in a more sustainable way.
Solar and wind farms now stand on the spoil heaps of the former opencast mine, as far as the eye can see. Among these, one steel structure in particular catches the eye – the GICON high-altitude wind power plant. It is still under construction but already outgrowing the neighbouring giant windmills.
It is a big day for the GICON team: Europe’s biggest and most powerful crane, a yellow monster machine, is lifting a tower segment weighing many tonnes into place. Up there, some 160 metres above ground level, climbers are putting the pieces together.
GICON employs some of Germany’s finest engineers. The company was founded by Jochen Großmann. Why is the GICON team building such a massive structure in the first place? Euronews wants to know.
Why so high, Professor Großmann?
“Because the wind blows stronger and more steadily the further I get from the Earth’s surface,” Großmann explains on site, while a team of high-altitude climbers is moving up and down the steel struts spiderman-style. “That’s why wind turbines have become taller and taller – because there’s so much wind up there that they generate more than double the output of the turbines standing here in the surrounding area.”
Großmann’s idea: future wind farms should have ‘two storeys’ so that the wind can be ‘harvested’ twice – once at the bottom and once at the top. “Retrofitting existing wind farms with taller windmills alongside regular ones give us two tiers of high-altitude windmills, and allows us to triple the yield from the same area,” Großmann estimates.
GICON plans to erect 100 high-altitude windmills by the early 2030s, then the objective is to scale it up to 1,000 plants in a few years’ time. GICON could become a global player, “the opportunity is there”, Großmann tells Euronews.
“All the wind farms in Germany would offer the potential for 4,000 additional high-altitude wind turbines,” the GICON-CEO stresses, “Simply by retrofitting existing wind farms. That’s an incredible amount of potential. This also applies to African countries. We’ve had enquiries from Asia. The Chinese are asking about it. I think there’s huge international potential here.”