The Bundestag has given the green light for faster approvals for wind turbines and other industrial plants. On Thursday, the majority of MPs voted in a roll-call vote for a federal government law that is intended to significantly speed up approval procedures in Germany. Of 643 MPs, 377 voted yes, 257 voted no and nine MPs abstained.
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 hydrogen.
As the office of SPD member of the Bundestag Daniel Rinkert announced in response to a dpa inquiry 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. It also affects 2,000 approval procedures per year, it added.
As his party’s rapporteur, Rinkert played a key role in drafting the new law. “Today we are putting the super turbo on acceleration,” Rinkert explained in the Bundestag. The SPD MP says he believes that this will shorten procedures by an average of ten months.
The approval procedures are to be accelerated primarily through digitalization and the streamlining of existing procedural steps. The law is primarily intended to support the repowering of wind turbines – i.e. the replacement of older wind turbines with new ones.
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.
There was some harsh criticism from the opposition. The Union criticized, among other things, that it had generally taken too long to pass the law.
The law now approved by the Bundestag requires approval – it can therefore only come into force once the Bundesrat has given its approval.