The German Energiewende and the AfD - Connections between a German right-wing populist party and local initiatives against wind energy projects

The paper wants to explore the connections between the increasingly fierce conflicts against renewable energy projects, first and foremost wind turbines, and the success of the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Despite the fact, that energy politics are a rather minor issue in the debates in and around the AfD, the party clearly defines itself as climate skeptic and states in its program that it aims at bringing the German Energiewende to halt. We see a growing number of anti wind energy activists looking for strategic alliances both on local, regional and federal level and we find the AfD protesting together with anti-wind energy groups against building projects or the Energiewende in general. One finds a number of overlapping discourses of AfD and organized anti-wind initiatives, first and foremost the ones associated with the self-proclaimed national umbrella organization Vernunftkraft that hover around issues such as science skepticism, anti-elitism, fake news, or catastrophic scenarios of one kind or another. At the same it it mirrors typical populist rhetoric that is ever rising in (formerly stable?) first wave democracies in Europe and North America. In December 2016 we conducted a nation wide representative survey (n=2000) and found that nearly half of the people who opposed the Energiewende (44%) would vote for the German right-wing populist party AfD. It also showed significant differences between AfD voters and non-AfD voters in questions regarding energy and climate politics. Together with the analysis of discourses of and about the AfD and Energiewende critics the paper wants to shed light on these potential alliances.