Development of the employment in the shipbuilding (1958-2009) as well as wind energy industry (1993-2007) in Germany 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9,200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, northern Germany. Recently big hopes are particularly set on the offshore wind energy industry. Two recently discussed evolutionary concepts explain the emergence of new industries, such as wind energy, in space in different ways: the windows of locational opportunity concept stresses the locational freedom in the earliest stages of industrial development, whereas path creation emphasises the role of existing industrial development paths, such as shipbuilding, from which new paths, such as wind energy, emerge. The paper aims at analysing whether the new path of offshore wind energy emerged out of existing paths, mainly shipbuilding, in the five states of coastal Germany. It concludes that shipbuilding only indirectly affected the emergence of the new development path of offshore the wind energy industry in northern Germany. After the Second World War the shipbuilding industry has become the core manufacturing industry in northern Germany 1 . Several yard crises starting in the 1980s have led to pressures to restructure the regional economy. Against this background, big hopes have been set on the booming offshore wind energy sector as new impetus for regional employment and economic growth. Schamp (2000, p. 136), though, has pointed out that technologically determined industry cycles are not the only explanation for the decline and renewal in old industrial areas. Not only industries’ age, but also institutional tissues, sclerotic networks, institutional persistence and other lock-in effects have to be broken up in order to use the potential of new technologies and to master the challenges of industrial restructuring. The success and regional embeddedness of a new industry such as the offshore wind energy is affected by a combination of factors (Martin & Sunley, 2010; Storper, 2011; Boschma & Frenken, 2011). In addition to the motivation of decisive actors and market opportunities, it is particularly affected by specific capabilities which can differ from region to region due to varying regional conditions. This paper will particularly focus on the role of these regionally specific conditions related to the previously dominating shipbuilding industry in explaining the genesis of the offshore wind energy development path in the five states of northern Germany (Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). Do traditional shipbuilding companies invest in the new business fields of offshore wind energy? Which expertise, competences, skills and routines of former yard workers and engineers can be recombined and used in offshore wind energy? At which points in the development path and how did regional industrial policy in the five regional states ( Länder ) intervened in the restructuring process? Does the existing infrastructure constitute an important locational advantage in supporting the emergence of the offshore wind energy in the different states of northern Germany? Or are exogenous factors more important, such as the attraction of energy companies or key actors from outside the region, to explain the emergence of the industry in the regions? Overall, to what extent is the emerging development path of offshore wind energy in northern Germany related to the decline of the shipbuilding industry? Can we speak of tight relations with many commonalities or can we explain the emergence of the industry better by new impetuses and new windows of opportunity? The perception of a smooth restructuring from a declining core industry into a newly emerging growth industry, however, can also be the result of wishful thinking of regional economic promoters or local politicians. A handful newspaper articles about individual shipbuilding companies which were saved from bankruptcy due to offshore wind energy orders or easily made correlations between yards and offshore terminals might hide that shipbuilding-related regional- specific conditions are in fact not very relevant to offshore wind energy. Perhaps other triggering events have been much more significant. These might include the establishment or relocation of a core company, newly developed product innovations, specific policy measures as a reaction to the yard crises or the activities of new actors in the regional institutional environment and their effective promotion of offshore wind energy (Brenner & Fornahl, 2006). Northern Germany can be seen as an appropriate research area to tackle these questions, as in this region we can find both the declining shipbuilding industry as well as a relatively high density of research institutes and companies in offshore wind energy (see for instance IWR, 2008). The main sources for the empirical part of this research consist of both primary data collected through 17 in-depth interviews with the main actors in the states of northern Germany, such as the leading offshore wind energy companies, suppliers, shipbuilding companies, cluster managers, officials of industry associations and officials in state ministries, as well as secondary data in the form of annual reports, strategy papers and other statistics and reports. The first six interviews in Lower Saxony and Bremen took place in March 2010, whereas in August 2010 another eleven followed in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The paper is structured as follows. In the next section the decline in shipbuilding and emergence of the offshore wind energy cluster is further described. In the following section 3 the theoretical foundations of this paper based on path dependence and path creation are introduced, which have recently been much discussed in economic geography (see for instance Martin & Sunley, 2006 and Martin, 2010). Section 4 will then present the empirical analysis of the relationship between the emerging offshore wind energy clusters and the declining shipbuilding industry in the different states of northern Germany. Section 5 will summarise and conclude the paper. In the 1950s the shipbuilding industry in the northern part of former West Germany went through a real boom. Despite heavy war-related damages the industry boomed mainly due to tax reductions and favourable loans in order to reconstruct the trade fleet. The world-wide intensification of trade relations generated strong demand for large trade merchant vessels and hence the employment increased up to 113,000 in 1958 (200,000 if one would include suppliers); the lion’s share was employed in the coastal areas of West Germany. West Germany’s world market share in merchant shipbuilding reached its peak in 1956 with 17%. At that time it was the third biggest shipbuilding nation in the world, after Japan and Great Britain (Nuhn, 1990; Giese et al., 2011). In the 1960s business cycles started to show first ups and downs and the first bankruptcies and mergers and acquisitions of small and medium-sized yards took place. A dramatic decline started at the end of the 1970s. In 1978 West Germany’s world market share in merchant shipbuilding had dropped to only 2.1%. Despite strong support by the federal and state governments only 59% of the production capacities were used in 1979 (Nuhn, 1990). Although East Germany’s shipbuilding located in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was added to total employment in shipbuilding after reunification in 1990, the dramatic decline in yard employment steadily continued to the mere 22,000 employment currently (VSM, 2010, p. 65) (Figure 1). Large traditional shipyards, such as Bremer Vulkan, which employed over 5,000 workers in the 1970s, as well as many small and medium-sized yards, had to give up in the 1990s. The main reasons for this strong decline in the shipbuilding industry were seen in the strongly developing international competition in East Asia, the delay in necessary restructuring of the product range partly caused by state subsidies, relatively high production costs due to high wages and material costs, as well as currency disadvantages (strong D-Mark) (see Eich-Born, 2005; Nuhn, 1998, p. 318; Eich-Born & Hassink, 2005, Hassink & Shin, 2005; Giese et al., 2011, Tholen & Ludwig, 2005; Kramm, 1980). Currently about 22.000 people are employed in German shipyards whereby almost a third (6.724) is located in Niedersachsen, followed by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (4.916), Schleswig-Holstein (4.565), Hamburg (2.565) and Bremen (1.443) (VSM, ...

Context 2

... a couple of years big hopes are set on the booming offshore wind energy industry in northern Germany. According to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) only 9,200 persons were employed in planning and construction of wind farms in 1997, whereas about ten years later the number has increased to approximately 90,000 (Figure 1). Until 2020 the total number of employees is expected to be 112,000. These positive future expectations are mainly due to the strong expansion of the number of offshore wind farms. After finishing the construction of the first offshore wind farm, Alpha Ventus, 45 km north of Borkum in the North Sea, in November 2009, further investments in infrastructure is expected in three ...