Against the backdrop of the state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD has turned its fight against wind energy into a tool for mobilizing voters and an argument for returning to Russian energy supplies. On 26 August 2026, NDR noted that in its propaganda materials about wind turbines the party uses openly peculiar phrasing such as “windmills of shame” and “wind madness,” presenting wind power as an alleged threat to the landscape, the economy, and the interests of local residents — even though more than half of electricity generation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania already comes from wind. Commenting on the AfD’s “anti-wind” campaign, political scientist Manès Weisskircher of Dresden University of Technology told NDR that the party exploits public discontent with individual projects, exaggerates existing problems, and deliberately intensifies the campaign with misleading claims that border on evidence-free conspiracy thinking. No less important, he said, is that the far right’s anti-wind rhetoric is combined with calls to restore Nord Stream and return to Russian energy supplies.
This is not the first time the AfD has opposed wind power at the federal level. On 8 May 2026, the Bundestag considered a bill submitted by the AfD parliamentary group to repeal the Wind Energy Area Requirements Act (Windenergieflächenbedarfsgesetz) and a separate demand for a nationwide moratorium on further wind-energy development. Presenting the initiative, AfD deputy Christian Reck called the current system “planned-economy green madness.”
Over the past twenty years, wind power has ceased to be merely an additional energy source and has become one of Germany’s key means of electricity production. According to Destatis figures published on 6 March 2026, wind installations generated 131.3 billion kWh in 2025, or 30 percent of Germany’s total domestic generation. In the first quarter of 2026, wind’s share rose to 33.8 percent. If the sector’s development were halted, as the AfD wants, Germany would have to cover the resulting shortfall from other sources. That is already visible in first-quarter 2025 data: weak winds cut wind-power output by 29.2 percent, while electricity generation from gas rose 27.5 percent and from coal 15.3 percent over the same period.
The expansion of wind power matters for Germany and Europe not only in climate terms but also geopolitically. The European Commission made the accelerated build-out of renewables a central pillar of REPowerEU, the strategy to end dependence on Russian energy. As a result, Russia’s share of EU gas imports fell from about 45 percent on the eve of the full-scale war to 12 percent in 2025. New solar and wind capacity added after 2021 allowed the EU to avoid using Russian gas worth about €5.6 billion in 2025 alone. In other words, every additional megawatt-hour of domestic wind generation shrinks the potential market for suppliers of Russian fossil fuels.
The AfD proposes both to restrict wind power and to reopen channels for Russian gas. Its 2025 federal election program called for “putting the surviving string of Nord Stream 2 into operation as quickly as possible, repairing the damaged Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, and, until the country returns to nuclear generation, securing the stability of the power system with coal and gas.” Notably, to meet household heating demand the party also proposes a return to “cheap Russian pipeline gas.” The AfD’s intention to revive nuclear power would create a new problem: restoring closed plants and building new ones would take many years and large sums of money, while the party assigns coal and gas the central role in the interim. Such plans contradict the strategy the EU has pursued since 2022: replacing Russian energy with domestic generation so that Moscow cannot use energy resources as leverage. Thus the AfD’s anti-wind policy aligns with the Kremlin’s long-term interests, even in the absence of proof that specific initiatives were directly coordinated with Moscow.
The contradiction in the AfD’s position is that the party opposes wind power under the pretext of defending the public interest, even though ordinary Germans would be the first to feel the negative economic effects of such a reversal. According to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs on 16 July 2026, a record 436,300 people worked in Germany’s renewable-energy sector in 2025 alone, and onshore wind was the largest employer, with 131,300 workers. Scaling back wind generation would mean job losses in turbine and component manufacturing, mechanical engineering, construction, logistics, planning, and maintenance.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania itself could be hit hardest. In 2025 alone, the state approved 188 new wind turbines with a capacity of 1,146 MW and planned investment of about €1.95 billion. A revised state renewables law adopted in spring 2026 also expands mechanisms for communities and local residents to share in the revenues of new wind and solar projects. Abandoning turbine construction would mean lost future investment, lower tax revenues for local budgets, lost lease payments for landowners, and other financial damage.
Implementing the AfD’s proposals would leave German industry and households more exposed to external fuel prices and weaken the energy independence of the Federal Republic as a whole. The beneficiaries would be fossil-fuel suppliers, for whom the growth of domestic renewable generation means lost potential demand. If the AfD’s demand to restore Nord Stream were also realized, the main winner of such an energy reversal would be the Kremlin and the energy companies subordinate to it. All of this again raises the question of whose interests the AfD actually defends — and whether it has secret corrupt arrangements with the Kremlin that would threaten Germany with serious and lasting economic consequences.
