Top, the bet is on!
Chancellor Olaf Scholz promises the construction of 5 (five) wind turbines per day. It is in keeping with Chancellor Scholz's nature to make rather cautious forecasts. But: electricity will be the central energy carrier of the #transformation to #climate neutrality. This is not only the case in the foundry industry. This will increase electricity demand by 40% in the relevant period. #Green#power at competitive prices will therefore be key to achieving climate protection goals. So far so good.
Converted to turbines, the required expansion means that in Germany alone at least 2100 wind energy turbines of the 3-4 MW class are needed on average per year. That would be even "somewhat more" than the announced 5 per day. And since at present not even these are being built and approved, the pressure increases increasingly with every day that passes.
For the foundry industry, this results in a demand for hand-molded castings of about 31,500 t per 1 GW of installed wind power. This leads to an annual demand of 160,000 - 220,000 t for hand-formed structural parts made of cast iron.
Increased casting demand leads to #competition for today's available industrial production resources, in a situation where casting capacities in Germany are consolidating - within 5 years a minus of approx. 120,000 t of technical capacity.
Within Europe, only Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland have suitable foundries for the production of such hand-molded structural parts. However, the capacity will not be sufficient.
The largest capacities are to be found in China. However, there is a growing domestic demand there (hunger for energy, own climate targets), and in addition, the costs for overseas transport of such large cast structural parts are immense, because these castings do not fit into a standard container in terms of size and weight.
By the way: shipping large structural parts from overseas to the EU causes significant greenhouse gas emissions.
Conclusion: German foundries are a key driver of the transformation.
Foundries are systemrelevant and must be protected from further burdens in their efforts for international competitiveness, sufficient affordable energy, infrastructure, digitisation, etc. are necessary.
#Decarbonisation is only possible and affordable with the German foundry industry. My appeal to politicians: create the necessary framework conditions and do not drive value creation out of Germany by producing elsewhere in a more climate-damaging way! An industrial electricity price is at the top of the list.
Oh yes: We will keep track of who wins the bet. We would be happy to lose, alone ...
Many thanks to Dr. Max Schumacher, probably the whole of Europe would join in this bet, We will keep an eye on the issue.
