Acceleration areas and shortened approval procedures should ensure faster expansion of wind and solar farms and energy storage at the same locations. This step implements requirements from the 2023 EU Renewable Energy Directive. Approvals will also be facilitated for electrolyzers to boost hydrogen production.
The German federal cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law that would implement the EU’s renewable energy directive.
The draft law, jointly drafted by the ministries of transport, environment and economic affairs, includes planning and approval provisions for onshore wind energy and solar photovoltaics. Acceleration areas and shortened approval times are intended to accelerate the expansion of renewable energy sources. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the regulations also apply to energy storage systems that are built at the same location.
Central to the bill is the designation of so-called acceleration areas for onshore wind turbines and for PV systems with associated energy storage, which is regulated in the Building Decree and the Spatial Planning Act. According to the ministry, projects within these areas could then be approved in a simplified and accelerated procedure in accordance with the new provisions in the Wind Energy Area Requirements Act. In addition, the acceleration measures provided for in the directive for all projects, including those outside the acceleration areas, would be implemented through amendments to the Federal Immission Control Act.
The Renewable Energy Directive, which was revised last year, is based on the EU’s target to increase the share of renewable energy sources in gross final energy consumption in the EU to at least 42.5%. To achieve this goal, approval procedures must be significantly accelerated.
“The implementation of the acceleration areas is a real driver for more onshore wind energy. And it is also urgently needed when we look at the growth figures for wind energy,” says Carolin Dähling, head of communications and policy at Green Planet Energy. “It is also positive that, compared to the previous design, the federal government is making it easier to combine storage systems not only with solar energy, but also with wind energy systems. This will further accelerate the expansion of storage systems, help with the market integration of renewable energy sources, reduce times of negative electricity prices and thus make the systems more economical.”
Simplified approval of electrolyzers
The cabinet has also approved an amendment to facilitate and accelerate the approval of electrolyzers for the production of hydrogen. The government is thus implementing the requirements of the amended European Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), which will come into effect on August 4.
“With today’s decision, we make it easier to approve electrolysers for the production of hydrogen and thus adapt our rules for hydrogen acceleration as quickly as possible, even before the European directive comes into force,” said Parliamentary Undersecretary Jan-Niclas Gesenhues . at the Ministry of the Environment. “In this way we shorten the approval process for companies and significantly reduce bureaucracy.”
In the future, electrolyzers with a hydrogen production capacity of 50 tons per day or more will only have to go through an approval process prescribed by European legislation. Until now, approval under European law applied to all electrolyzers on an industrial scale.
For electrolyzers with a nominal electrical power of less than 5 MW, the approval requirement under the Emission Control Act would no longer apply. Electrolyzers with a production capacity of less than 50 tons of hydrogen per day could thus be approved via a simplified procedure.
The Federal Council still has to approve the bill.
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