It is hard not to notice them: Big, lean, white windmills, slowly rotating in the wind and carrying the inscription ENERCON on them. What started out as a little experiment in a garage a little more than 20 years ago, has become one of the leading windmill-producing companies in the world.

Alerted by the oil crisis of 1973, Aloys Wobben, a engineering graduate from the technical university of Braunschweig, realized that he had to find a way to make renewable energy sources more usable. Otherwise, we would be left without any energy very soon. Vast tours on his bicycle through windy Eastfrisia and the rest of Northern Germany gave the Emsländer the idea that the energy source of choice would be wind.
It was 1984 when Wobben founded the company Enercon. He constructed his first windmill, financed through money he earned by building electronic elements. Capacity: 22kW. As it was very successful, Enercon and Wobben continued to develop their windmills. In 1985 they produced 55kW turbines with a gearbox and capable of variable speed. In 1992 they figured out how to build windmills that were gearless and functioned without hydraulics, making them thus very non-polluting and environment-friendly. Also the capacity of the windmills has grown astronomically since their beginnings. The latest model, the E112, produces 4.5 Megawatt, which is 200 times as much as the first model from 1984. This is enough energy to supply 5000 houses.
Today Enercon employs over 6000 employees and has a production-area the size of approxomately 40 soccer fields. Despite the crippling German economy, the export business is booming. In 1999 the company made 865 million DM (ca. 445 million €) in sales, and has been rising ever since. Having risen to the third position in worldwide windmill production, Wobben’s company Enercon has become an important player in global economics.

As stated in an interview with Wobben in the magazine “Wind People” of 2004, it is Wobben’s firm belief that energy isn’t only for the rich countries but that “all of the world’s population should have access to affordable, modern energy, and to the benefits this energy can provide, while protecting the environment and guaranteeing energy security.” Thus he and Enercon are very much engaged in a technology transfer to Brazil and India, as there is, especially in India, strong support for renewable energy sources. Other production sites for Enercon are, in addition to its headquarters in Aurich: Emden, Magdeburg, Sweden and Turkey. The next export aims might be Estonia, Norway, and Latvia.

It can be realized how much power there actually is in wind energy through the fact that there are 16,500 windmills built in Germany, a third of these produced by Enercon. Together windmills produce 5% of the total energy needed in Germany, a highly industrialized nation. Wobben is optimistic that they could even reach 25%, as it would only require 7500 of the latest Enercon model, the E112. Confronted with the criticism that this would mean destroying wonderful landscapes, Wobben only refers to the 184,000 high voltage masts standing in Germany, against which nobody protests, though they, in his opinion, look a lot worse than a “beautiful” windmill (Frankfurter Rundschau, 2005). ( ?? what does wobben refer to?)

For his engagement in renewable energy sources, Wobben has been rewarded with the “Bundesverdienstkreuz” and in 2000, together with Dr. Franz Deschner, the German Environment Prize, carrying a 1,000,000 DM (ca. 500,000 €) prize. In 2006, he was additionally given an honorary doctorate by the University of Kassel. As profound expert on renewables, he represented Germany at the Renewable Energy Task Force of the G8-states.

Concerning the issue of offshore-projects (placing windmills off the shore in water at depths of 30-40m), Wobben is precautious . In his opinion there are too many variables concerning the financing, and after all, he is responsible for 6,000 people and not dependent on the stock market. And other future projects? The visionary tinkerer Wobben is already working on tackling the next fading resource: water. Much of the prize money of the German Environment Prize was invested in projects to improve desalination plants to ensure enough water in the future. Thus it looks like as if the story of Aloys Wobben is all but finished…