A new law will make it much easier to build and rebuild wind turbines and all industrial plants. The key lever is digitalization.
The name is cumbersome, but the promise is big: A new law is intended to ensure significantly faster approval procedures throughout Germany. It affects tens of thousands of industrial plants – including all existing and future wind turbines in the country. The Bundestag gave the green light on Thursday. The members of the government factions praised the innovation as a “super turbo”. But what is it all about?
The planned innovation is intended to make it possible to build and convert certain plants, including wind turbines, more quickly in Germany in the future. For this purpose, the so-called Federal Immission Control Act is being amended – a law that affects all plants that cause noise or have other potentially harmful effects on the environment. In addition to wind turbines, this also includes rolling mills, foundries, waste disposal plants and plants for the production of green hydrogen.
Procedures are to be shortened by an average of 10 months
SPD politician Daniel Rinkert, who played a key role in negotiating the law, estimates that by the end of the decade there will be 20,000 changes to industrial plants that require approval. “Today we are putting the super turbo on to speed things up,” Rinkert said in the Bundestag on Thursday. The SPD MP says he believes that this will shorten procedures by an average of ten months.
Digitalisation should provide the boost
The approval procedures are to be made faster, primarily through the abolition of previously required procedural steps and through digitalization. “We are putting an end to the era of file folders,” promised Rinkert. In future, a USB stick will be sufficient for approval applications. The law is also intended to significantly simplify the repowering of wind turbines – that is, replacing older wind turbines with new ones. According to Rinkert, there have been many hurdles here so far. Even a software update in a wind turbine requires a lengthy process. This should be over in the future.
In addition, approval periods can only be extended once by three months in the future. Up to now, this was possible without limit. A further extension requires the express consent of the applicant, it is said. This is to prevent procedures from being repeatedly drawn out. In addition, documents that are not decisive for the assessment of approval eligibility should in future be able to be submitted later – without blocking the start of construction.
The law also provides for changes in public participation. The so-called “discussion meetings”, which residents can also attend to obtain information, should be eliminated if possible or replaced by digital formats.
50,000 industrial plants alone fall under the law
As Rinkert’s office said in response to a dpa query and citing figures from the Federation of German Industries (BDI), a total of 50,000 industrial plants in Germany that require approval are subject to the law. Wind turbines are not included here. According to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), there were 30,243 wind turbines in Germany at the beginning of the year. All wind turbines that are still being built will also go through the simplified procedures in the future.
Environmental standards would not be weakened by the simplified procedures, assured several members of the Greens and SPD during the almost 70-minute debate in the plenary session. In the past, environmental associations had repeatedly warned against pushing ahead with bureaucracy reduction at the expense of environmental and nature standards.
Climate protection enshrined in law as a protected asset
In order to ensure that climate protection plays a major role in all procedures in the future, the traffic light coalition has had the climate enshrined in law as a protected asset. This means that all regulations issued on the basis of the new law can also regulate requirements for protecting the climate. What this means in practice remains to be seen. The Union faction fears that the government has built a brake into the law in all its efforts to speed things up. The protection status for the climate could lead to more bureaucracy, warned CDU MP Steffen Bilger. There was also some harsh criticism from the AfD. AfD MP Thomas Ehrhorn spoke of an “ideological project”.
On the other hand, the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) was very supportive. BWE President Bärbel Heidebroek spoke of a “strong amendment” that would give a boost to wind power in Germany. “The streamlining of the approval procedures will not only help project sponsors, but also the authorities to achieve the politically expected pace of expansion of wind energy as a key player,” she explained.
However, before this can become reality, the project must overcome another crucial hurdle: the Federal Council must still approve the traffic light coalition’s “approval boost”.
Source: Stern
