How much does the energy transition cost

"Five Eiffel Towers a day for eight years? Markus Steilemann, the new boss of the chemical association VCI, makes a calculation for the expansion of wind power. Unfortunately it's wrong.

Markus Steilemann made the big appearance, after all that. Steilemann, head of the Leverkusen plastics specialist Covestro, was freshly elected last week as the new president of the VCI industry association, when he switched to attack. At the general meeting of the association, he conjured up the challenges of the energy transition, and the Bild newspaper made a reckoning with German energy policy on Wednesday. Six columns on the second page, along with a photo of the engineer Steilemann. Just one day later he will be wishing that nobody had noticed his calculations.

Because on the podium, Steilemann used a three-pointer against the wind power. 

Ten new wind turbines will be needed every day for the next eight years, each of which will require 4,000 tons of steel. "That's half an Eiffel Tower," he calculated. The result of the calculation promptly ended up in the headline: "We would need five Eiffel Towers every day," headlined Bild. "I'd like to see how we can get that going," said Steilmann, adding that Germany was threatened with falling into an "industrial museum". Five Eiffel Towers a day, that would really be quite a chunk.

The Eiffel Tower doesn't weigh 8,000 tons either

If it was true. The next day, the German wind industry reported on Twitter, they had corrections. A large wind turbine does not need 4,000 tons of steel, but around 550. Not ten wind turbines would have to be erected every day, but only six, according to figures from the German Energy Agency. The Eiffel Tower does not weigh 8,000 tons either, but more than 10,000, of which 7,300 tons are steel. One association attests the other that "simply nothing" is correct about the calculation. Not five, but less than half an Eiffel Tower would have to be erected every day. And there is enough steel for it in the country.

Steilemann, 52, was only elected President of the VCI last week, so far he has not been noticed as an opponent of the energy transition. "The expansion of renewable energies is a way out," he said recently at a climate congress of the industry association BDI. There, too, he presented his Eiffel Tower calculations, even in the presence of the Federal Minister of Economics. But nobody did the math back then.

On Wednesday, the Covestro boss tried to calm down "attentive fact fans" via Twitter. Of course, they would have noticed that 4,000 tons "is enough for more than one wind turbine". But that doesn't change the enormous efforts that went into the energy transition.

Or does it? Steilemann will follow up again on Thursday, this time with an apology. The 4,000 tons were wrong, he now writes. "I very much regret this mistake because I have not fulfilled my own claim to be true to the facts." Which would then settle the matter."