The Luxembourgish renewable energy company Soler is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Wind energy in the country has made major strides since 2001, growing from just nine wind turbines back then to 59 installations today.
In total, there are currently 77 wind turbines in the country, with many more under construction.
Output has also climbed immensely over the same period, rising from 12 to close to 412 gigawatt-hours. Director Paul Zeimet points out that this progress owes a great deal to increasingly high-performance turbines.
By 2030, Luxembourg is aiming to generate more than 1,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity from wind. That is the target set out in Luxembourg's integrated national energy and climate plan (PNEC). Under the PNEC, output should reach 800 gigawatt-hours this year, though a realistic figure is closer to 500 gigawatt-hours.
Even so, Zeimet remains confident that the 2030 target can still be met, and perhaps even exceeded. For that to happen, however, the pace of expansion has to pick up. The Soler director points to lengthy procedures, in particular around nature conservation permits, as the main brake on further development.
Following the government's roundtable on energy, progress is nevertheless already being felt thanks to the "Simple, Fast, Renewable" principle.
To get a grasp of the scale, 1,000 gigawatt-hours could supply electricity to around 231,000 four-person households from 2030 onwards. That calculation is based on an average annual consumption of 4,500 kilowatt-hours per household, well above today's figure of 3,500 kilowatt-hours.
Electricity demand is set to keep rising in the years to come, driven in part by the wider take-up of heat pumps and electric vehicles.
The PNEC projects an increase in electricity consumption of around 18% between 2025 and 2030. Alongside that, energy conservation remains a key strand of the strategy, Zeimet notes.
Soler is putting its faith in new technologies, in particular around nature and species conservation. Cameras, for instance, can detect birds and automatically bring a wind turbine to a halt when a bird is at risk.
Such a system is already in operation at the Carlshof site. Over the past few years, more than 22 red kite birds have also been fitted with transmitters to gather scientific data.
That allows the team to observe their behaviour precisely, Zeimet said, including when they migrate, when they return, and whether they make their way back to their nests to raise their young.
Those findings could then feed into future permitting processes, potentially reducing the number of turbine shutdowns required for species protection.
Strict rules on noise levels also apply in Luxembourg. At night, Zeimet explained, the company is not allowed to emit more than 37 dBA at the outermost boundary of a designated development zone (PAG), which is a threshold considerably tighter than in other countries.
It has also become possible to expand wind farms closer to roads and industrial areas. Soler already has concrete projects in the pipeline. That, in Zeimet's view, is a real step in the right direction.
Moving nearer to "noise sources" such as industrial zones makes sense, he said, and Soler is working on projects there too. It makes particular sense in those locations, he added, since that is where the electricity is being consumed.
There is very little in the way of opposition to wind turbines in the country, Zeimet explained. The citizens' initiative in Burden is something of an exception, having challenged Soler in court on three separate counts.
Two rulings have so far been handed down, both in Soler's favour. A final ruling on the building permit is imminent, but Zeimet is confident that the outcome will once again be favourable.
Once it is in hand, he said, everything will be in place for construction to begin next year, with the facility completed by year-end.
For a range of projects, the timeframe between the initial idea and actual implementation has been slashed. The Eschdorf project, for instance, was pushed through in under four years and is scheduled to go into operation next year.
For Soler, that is a sign that procedures can be sped up without sidelining nature conservation or public concerns. A number of new wind turbines are due to be commissioned in Luxembourg later this year, including, according to Soler, five turbines in the Redange canton, one in Schieren and one in Dippach.
New projects are also under way in Kehlen and Eschdorf, while older turbines in Bour will be replaced by two higher-performance units.
Zeimet identifies three major challenges for the years ahead: maintaining public acceptance, expanding the electricity grid, and building enough storage capacity to keep the system in balance.
