This Clean Energy Wire article, originally published on April 19, is republished today by Renewables Now under a CC BY 4.0 license.

April 20 (Renewables Now) – The expansion of onshore wind power in Germany received another blow when the Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA) announced plans to reduce the capacity offered for the upcoming auction in May 2021.

After underwriting the last bidding round in February, the network agency said it expects the same to be true in the next auction round. The hesitant interest in tendering has been attributed, among other factors, to a lack of standardization of species protection rules that often prohibit or delay permits for new wind farms. “The patchwork of regulations nationwide is disrupting authorities, project developers and courts and leading to slow global expansion,†a group of energy sector associations said in a joint press release.

Their case was taken up by Jochen Flasbarth, Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Environment who told the Der Spiegel news magazine: “If the negotiations on species protection standards are not completed soon, we will have to regulate this at the federal level via an amendment to the Federal Law on Nature Conservation. “

The federal environment and energy departments have both pushed for unified rules on species protection standards in wind turbine planning, but so far all 16 state environment ministers ( Umweltministerkonferenz – UMK) were unable to come to an agreement. At their last meeting in December 2020, they decided on a common standard but allowed different states to deviate from it. The energy industry says that only “legally secure, clear and predictable application of the law on the protection of species” could allow a faster expansion of wind power. The next meeting of the UMK and the Federal Ministry of the Environment is scheduled for Wednesday April 21.

The lack of approved projects has led to a decrease in annual installed wind capacity in Germany from more than 5,000 to just 1,400 MW since 2017. In 2020, a total of 3,860 MW of onshore wind power was tendered. , but only 2,672 MW have been allocated. The current share of renewables in Germany’s electricity consumption is around 45%. The government’s 2030 target is 65%, with many stakeholders arguing that an increasing amount of electric cars and electric heaters will require much more than that, especially in light of the EU’s more ambitious climate targets .