May 27, 2024
Source: Energie & Management Powernews
The German Wind and Solar Energy Agency has published a map dossier on the Internet on the areas made available for renewable power generation and is calling for more progress.
The German Wind and Solar Energy Agency (FA Wind Solar) has created a map dossier to illustrate the status of land designation, particularly for wind power. With the Wind Energy Area Requirements Act, the federal government has obliged each federal state to make a certain proportion of its land available for the use of wind energy. This is to be two percent of the federal area by 2032. Individual requirements apply to each federal state, which, according to FA Wind Solar, no state has yet met.
The federal states have until 31 May to set out how they intend to achieve the proportion of land for wind energy use (land contribution values) specified by the federal government by the end of 2027. With the help of four interactive maps and accompanying texts, FA Wind und Solar shows how the federal government's area targets are distributed, how much area has already been designated in the federal states and how much area is still missing at state level in order to achieve the legally stipulated shares.
"Some federal states are already quite close to the targets. However, in order to achieve the nationwide two percent target, additional designations are still required in each federal state," explained Peter Ahmels, Chairman of the FA Wind und Solar Board. The maps are based on the area contribution values of the "Act on the Determination of Area Requirements for Onshore Wind Energy Plants" (WindBG) for the individual federal states as well as the annual monitoring in the 2023 report of the Federal-State Cooperation Committee.
Antje Wagenknecht, Managing Director of FA Wind und Solar, emphasized: "Our maps not only provide planning authorities and decision-makers with valuable information, but also give the public an insight into the progress and challenges of implementing the energy transition."
Interactive maps freely available
Users of the maps can see how the federal target is distributed across the individual federal states and what the status of land designation is. The maps also show whether state, regional or urban land-use planning is responsible for the designation of land in a federal state.
In particular, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia had designated less than 1 percent of their land area. In Baden-Württemberg it was 0.5 percent, in Bavaria 0.7 percent, in Saxony 0.2 percent, in Saxony-Anhalt 0.8 percent and in Thuringia 0.4 percent.
In all five federal states, the area that can actually be used was even smaller than the designated area. The FA Wind Solar therefore concludes that a considerable amount of land for wind energy use must be identified and designated in planning in order to achieve the area contribution values of the WindBG.
The interactive maps of the FA Wind and Solar are available on the Internet.
Author: Susanne Harmsen
