In the future, Thurn und Taxis wants to build wind turbines on an area of around 30 square kilometers. The Regensburg family is considered the largest private forest owner in Germany. In the project area alone, in the east of the district, it covers 150 square kilometers, as reported by Bayerischer Rundfunk.
Up to 55 wind turbines could be built in the unincorporated areas of Forstmühler Forst and Kreuther Forst, as well as in the municipalities of Tegernheim, Wiesent, Wörth an der Donau and Wiesenfelden in the neighboring Lower Bavarian district of Straubing-Bogen. This is clear from a study of the potential for wind energy that the family's forestry company had prepared, according to Raoul Kreienmeier, forestry director of Thurn und Taxis. However, this maximum should not be exhausted.
Thurn und Taxis plans a wind power plant on the Danube
With the Schiederhof II wind farm, the family already operates three wind turbines with a total power of 7.5 megawatts on its property in the Straubing-Bogen district. However, the large project that has been started is raising concerns in the region.
Dozens of wind turbines would completely change the landscape, said the mayor of Wörth, Josef Schütz (CSU), in an interview with the BR. Implementation must be preceded by “real citizen participation” and residents must be able to benefit financially from such projects.
According to the Prince's House, these aspects should be incorporated into future planning. The location on the banks of the Danube is particularly suitable because the wind arrives unhindered and high yields are possible. Sensitive and valuable areas should not be handed over to wind energy.
Princess Gloria: “All climate change is a pretext to introduce harsh socialism”
But the royal family's plans raise questions. Princess Gloria herself has violently criticized this technology in the past.
A good year ago, in the format “Attention, Reichelt!”, where she is a regular guest, she raised the thesis: “All climate change is a pretext to introduce hard socialism.”
He referred to wind turbines as “those huge bird and bat crushers.” The entire Federal Republic is “full of wind turbines that destroy everything.” This is exactly what would happen with new wind energy projects in family forests.
The fact is that the Scientific Service of the Bundestag came to the conclusion that wind turbines in forest areas are particularly harmful to bats. But this problem can be avoided with simple measures, especially through targeted management of operations, as investigated by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW).
Wind turbines are supposed to change air pressure: Experts disagree
Furthermore, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis complained that the change in atmospheric pressure caused by wind turbines and its effects had not been investigated.
However, there are certainly studies on this. “The effects are not that great,” climatologist Marc Salzmann from the Institute of Meteorology at the University of Leipzig stated in an interview with the newspaper “Efahrer” in 2021. The temperature increases slightly near the ground and the air above the turbine becomes a little colder, but it happens. The point is that no heat is added, the air is simply distributed differently.
Unlike nuclear energy, wind energy is not environmentally friendly, says von Thurn und Taxis in the video. “The footprint of these objects is much, much worse. But that doesn't matter because it's just ideology,” he said, referring to the construction and dismantling of wind turbines.
The reality is that a large part of the facilities can already be recycled and for complex plastics, industrial processing processes with a positive market value are also being implemented, as noted by the Federal Environment Agency.
Has Gloria von Thurn und Taxis changed her mind about wind energy?
Given the royal family's new wind energy project, one might think the princess has changed her mind about the technology. But there is little evidence of this.
Politicians are “systematically deceiving” people, he said in March this year in another video about “Attention Reichelt! “, in which he criticizes wind energy several times. He is using the weather to “take money out of people's pockets.” People have to defend themselves from this theft.
Apparently, Thurn und Taxis doesn't mind making money from it.