Helgoland, the offshore industry and green hydrogen

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(Hier finden Sie die deutsche Version des Beitrags)

In Germany and Europe, there is concern about a blackout in the face of ongoing discussions about energy shortages as a result of Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine. Depending on how one looks at it, the energy transition in Germany is considered to have been delayed or even to have failed. In many places, horror scenarios are being sketched out.

We decided to look ahead and take a closer look at what is considered one of the big factors for the success of the energy transition: offshore wind power. To get a closer look at what is actually happening, installed and maintained offshore, we visited WindMW GmbH, which operates on Helgoland as well as in Bremerhaven and Zossen.

This series of articles comprises several parts, which we publish from Tuesday to Friday this week.

Published so far:

• Offshore wind power - a building block for energy independence
• Interview on offshore wind power: "It's a huge challenge".
• Wind power jobs: The offshore service technician - the way is the way round
• What impact does offshore wind power have on ecosystems and the climate?

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The streams of visitors move onto the island in waves. From morning to noon, they are washed in by larger and smaller ships; in the afternoon and evening, the mainland recovers most of the people. Then it gets quieter again on Helgoland.

As quiet as the island often lies there, there must sometimes have been a clash when modernisation ideas were put on the table. It is no secret that there was also resistance when Helgoland decided to become an "offshore service island" more than ten years ago. So it may now seem all the more surprising that the people of Helgoland want to jump straight into the next energy transition project and have turned to the production of green hydrogen - again, initially with some trepidation among the residents.

The fact that they are now pushing the hydrogen project called "Aqua Ventus" on Helgoland may also have something to do with the balance they have been able to draw in terms of offshore wind power. The mayor, Jörg Singer, who is still in office, was instrumental in pushing the settlement of the offshore companies and the hydrogen project "Aqua Ventus". Singer has been in office since 2011. At the turn of the year, he will voluntarily resign from office, and his successor has already been elected. Nevertheless, he wants to remain active for the island.

Investments for the future

According to the port project company Helgoland, which was founded with the decision to become an offshore service island, wind power companies made the first enquiries in spring 2009 as to whether they could settle on the island. At that time, the island's economic future lay in research and tourism. Tourism was actually declining. The island was now striving for a triad: Research, Tourism, Offshore.

Among other things, the south harbour had to be prepared again for the construction of the service stations. This meant that not only the offshore wind power companies had to invest, but Helgoland as a municipality also contributed to the costs. The total investment volume was around 30 million - also fed by funding from the state of Schleswig-Holstein. For the small municipality, all this was no mean feat.

Expansion of the southern harbour

Around 30,000 square metres of harbour area were modernised and other repair measures were also initiated. The work was partly interrupted by extensive explosive ordnance clearance. A legacy that Helgoland still retains from the Second World War.

As the port company announced in 2013, the "approximately 35,000 square metres of land had to be cleared of the legacies of the Second World War, in part down to a depth of 5 metres". More than 1,300 ordnance items were removed. Lobsters that had previously settled there were also captured from the construction areas in the harbour and relocated. For a research project, 3,000 juveniles had been marked and released by the Alfred Wegener Institute about 10 years before the construction measures in order to provide more scientific data on the development conditions in the field.

In total, the service buildings with workshops and warehouses of the three wind power companies RWE, E.on and WindMW were built on an area of 10,000 square metres. WindMW's large workshop with office wing covers around 2,300 square metres - the company's entire site 3,600 square metres. The two sites of RWE and E.on were later - with the takeover of E.on's offshore business by RWE - combined into one company site.

More jobs, more residents, more tourism

In initial forecasts on the settlement of offshore wind power companies, it was calculated that over the next 25 years "around 150 people would work and live on Helgoland for the operation of the offshore wind farms". In addition, there would be further temporary jobs with suppliers, construction and shipping companies. It was also hoped that the image would be enhanced.

For Mayor Jörg Singer, the job gains in 2014 meant a plus of 20 percent for the island, as he explained to NDR1 at the time. The population on Helgoland fluctuates between 1300 and 1500 people.

According to the municipality of Helgoland, 120 long-term jobs have actually been created among the service technicians after "a steady state of operation". These are "filled by a total of 240 service technicians and specialist engineers due to shift operations". A further 30 jobs have been created in and around the harbours on Helgoland.

The fear that offshore development could make the island less attractive for travellers and tourists did not come true. In a balance sheet from the year 2021, it is stated for 2016 - one year after the wind farms went into operation - that tourism figures had increased by 20 percent compared to the previous year. This underlines "the positive development and the good interaction of offshore wind power on Helgoland with the core business of tourism", writes the municipality.

Since 2014, among other things, the first tourist offers for excursions to the offshore wind farm area of the HelWin cluster have developed. Jörg Singer also confirms that the growth in tourism has been sustained. So at the moment the triad is working: research, tourism, offshore.

Kale dinner, fire brigade and some sport

The integration of offshore employees is important to both the community of Helgoland and the wind power companies. For example, WindMW invites employees to a joint kale dinner once a year at the former Hotel Atoll (which was bought by WindMW in 2019). Employees are also encouraged to feel free to seek contact with the island community. Some of the offshore service employees are therefore now also part of sports teams and the volunteer fire brigade, as both Singer and WindMW tell us.

Since - where people meet - lives sometimes interweave without any outside encouragement, there is now also a WindMW employee who owns one of the lobster stalls. Although this is the result of a love affair that did not last and for which a replacement had to be found, the number of inhabitants on the island has nevertheless increased. After the takeover of the lobster shack, a residential town on Helgoland was also bought.

The employees of RWE have been accommodated in a newly built small settlement in the midlands. Helgoland has, however, taken strict care to ensure that neither living space nor the number of beds for tourists on the island have been reduced by new construction and takeovers. However, the loss of the former four-star Hotel Atoll still visibly hurts here and there.