Onshore Wind Permitting: Germany

Overview

Securing consent for an onshore wind farm in Europe takes far longer than building one. Before starting construction, renewable energy developers must hold stakeholder consultations and secure an array of permits including planning permission and environmental impact assessments. This process can take upwards of five years – and sometimes stretch beyond a decade, depending on location and technology – in several European markets.

Onshore wind is particularly affected by this bureaucratic gauntlet. Slow permitting processes have limited the project pipeline around Europe, meaning governments are lagging behind on achieving the new capacity they have targeted.

In 2018, the European Commission demanded a two-year limit on permitting lead times. But the average period still ranges from two to five years depending on the country, with individual cases extending for much longer. Slow and complex procedures, legal challenges, land use conflicts and shortages of trained staff and funding at government agencies are slowing timelines and holding back renewable energy deployment.

Impact

The Council of the European Union tackled this challenge head-on in its latest Renewable Energy Directive RED, adopted in November 2023. Key action points in the directive include establishing renewable energy as an area of “overriding public interest” to reduce delays from lawsuits, fast-tracking processes between administrative departments and enforcing stricter timelines within which authorities must complete approvals.

Securing an environmental permit is one of the most time-consuming stages of permitting. In 2022, Germany started applying many of the EU’s recommended measures, particularly easing permitting rules around species protection for onshore wind developers. The country temporarily exempted projects from this stage, providing they are located in pre-identified areas that have already been assessed or that pose low ecological risks.

As a result, permitted wind capacity has rebounded; in 2023, the country consented 7.6 gigawatts, the highest level since 2016 and double the average permitted capacity between 2017 and 2022. In the first eight months of 2024, Germany permitted over 6.5 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity, up 47% from the same period last year and nearly equaling total permitted capacity in 2023.

Opportunity

Despite Germany’s success in easing permitting bottlenecks, the country is still not approving enough capacity to meet its 115GW-by-2030 onshore wind target. In the last decade the country has permitted an average of 4.4GW of onshore wind capacity per year. The 7.6GW consented in 2023 is barely more than half of the 14GW of capacity the country needs to permit each year through 2028 to hit its 2030 installation target, assuming projects take two years to come online after developers secure a permit.

While there is still room for improving Germany’s onshore wind development landscape, it has successfully accelerated deployment and mitigated a common bottleneck facing renewable energy projects around the world. Other European countries facing similar permitting delays, such as Italy and France, could follow Germany’s lead to boost their onshore wind project pipelines.

Source

BloombergNEF, European Union