Lünersee II power plant project: LH Wallner and Illwerke should do their homework instead of advertising drums

2023-05-10 09:26:33

Whether Vorarlberg or Styria has the largest power plant in terms of output is secondary

Vienna (OTS) – The environmental organization VIRUS calls on the Vorarlberg governor Wallner and the Illwerke to concentrate more on the planning homework than on big words for the Lünersee II power plant project, which is only in the planning phase. Spokesman Wolfgang Rehm: “As we saw in the case of the second largest power plant project, Koralm in Styria, which is identical in terms of performance, a cavern power plant can easily result in a hydrogeological planning disaster. Therefore, all efforts should be focused on that and not on exaggerated PR fuss”.

Both the Vorarlberg and the Styrian power plants claim to want to build the largest power plant in Austria. In fact, the planned machine sets are the same at around 1000 MW. However, as Rehm emphasizes, there are differences: “The Vorarlberg project is the expansion of a power plant group of a well-established supplier and is integrated into an existing reservoir with a reservoir that is 16 times as large as that planned for the Styrian counterpart. The latter is a pure pumped hydroelectric power station without primary energy and adventure of two non-industry forestry companies with major environmental impacts. It’s not just the size of the machines that matters.”

According to the current state of knowledge, no serious environmental effects are to be expected at Lünersee II, the hurdle lies in the structural challenge of cavity construction and in overcoming geological conditions and mountain water ingress if one of the currently trendy cavern power plants is to be built in the mountain. At least an exploratory drilling had been started here, which the Styrian project planners had saved themselves, only to be faced with the situation that court experts had questioned the structural feasibility. “It is incomprehensible why the Vorarlber governor, Wallner, repeatedly for months on a project that is only intended to produce for the German market and for which a submission is planned in 2 years at the earliest, is vaguely demanding that the process be accelerated, while the Illwerke apparently unilaterally request the duration of the process to be equally generous up to 7 years” criticized Rehm. It is entirely in the hands of the project planners how quickly things go. “Only when all the homework is done and carefully planned can there be a high-quality and fast process,” concludes Rehm.