Court of Audit reveals

Upper Austria has overslept the energy transition

Wind turbines play virtually no role in Upper Austria's energy policy.

(Bild: P. Huber)

PV system owners are annoyed because they cannot feed in surplus solar power - there is a lack of grid capacity. In a special audit, the State Court of Auditors investigated how this could happen and identified strategic failings on the part of Energie AG and political decision-makers.

Upper Austria is the "front-runner" in renewable energies compared to other federal states: The state councillor responsible, Markus Achleitner (ÖVP), never tires of emphasizing this, just recently again at the Energy Saving Fair in Wels. And there has indeed been some movement in this respect - but only after the provincial energy supplier Energie AG implemented a change in strategy under the new Management Board. That was a year ago.

Until then, Energie AG, which is majority-owned by the province of Upper Austria, had been dormant when it came to the energy transition. This is the conclusion reached - albeit in different words - by the State Court of Audit (LRH) in a special audit report published on Wednesday.

Investments in the energy transition neglected
The audit was initiated in July 2023 by the Neos state parliamentary party, which, according to party leader Felix Eypeltauer, wanted to "shed light on Upper Austria's energy supply and energy policy". The core message of the report: Energie AG's strategy had been focused exclusively on leveraging synergy effects and increasing efficiency for too long, and investments in the energy transition and the necessary infrastructure had been neglected until the previous year: "In 2020, wind power and PV accounted for 1.4 percent of the Energie AG OÖ Group's electricity generation," the report states as an example.

The focus of the Power Strategy 2020 was on improving earnings potential in order to meet the challenges of the energy market in the long term. Increasing the share of wind power and PV was not a primary goal.

Aus dem Prüfbericht des Landesrechnungshofs

Two billion euros for grid expansion by 2035
The expansion of the electricity grid by 2023 was completely overlooked, which is now putting the Energie AG subsidiary Netz OÖ under pressure in view of the ongoing photovoltaic boom. For the strategy launched under the new CEO Leonhard Schitter, which aims to make Energie AG climate-neutral by 2035, the Group estimates the investment requirement at around four billion euros. "Around half of this relates to the grid area," the LRH states.

Contrary interpretations of the report
Neos boss Eypeltauer concludes that the audit report reveals "that Energie AG did not really understand the need for an actual energy transition until 2023." This is primarily the fault of "the ÖVP-led provincial government" and Provincial Councillor Achleitner as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Energie AG. They had failed to "create the right economic policy conditions for the energy transition".

The ÖVP is less critical of the LRH report. It "confirms our course and the successful cooperation with Energie AG", enthuses Christian Dörfel, head of the party. The switch to renewable energies simply "does not happen overnight".

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Energy transition emperor or renewables grouch: depending on the party political perspective, Upper Austria is one thing and then another. With the Court of Audit, an undoubtedly irreproachable authority has now made a serious classification. It is now obvious that provincial politics, which has a decisive influence on the direction of Energie AG, has neglected the issue of the energy transition for far too long. However, lamenting about this does not help: the milk has already been spilled, so to speak. The Court of Audit also confirms that the direction has been right since 2023 - we now need to build on this.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV, Alexander Schwarzl, Markus Wenzel)