Content

According to the EEG 2021, the installed capacity of photovoltaics is to double to 100 GW by 2030. Various scenarios go even further and predict that the installed capacity is to triple to 150 GW by 2030 and multiply to 385 to 500 GW by 2045. Up to now, ca. 75 % of the expansion has been realized on buildings and constructions and ca. 25 % as ground-mounted systems. For various reasons, this relation is likely to shift in favour of ground-mounted systems.

In the light of this development, the project ‘Future Solar Power Plants: Technologies, Effects, spatial Management’ on behalf of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), evaluates the numerous developments that are describable today already and the consequences of the necessary expansion from a nature conservation perspective, and develops options and possible actions für nature conservation.

The Stiftung Umweltenergierecht (Foundation for Environmental Energy Law) supports the project with legal expertise. We thus look at possible changes in the regulation regarding the expansion of photovoltaics not only within but also outside the German Renewable Energy Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG). For example, with a view to spatial management we look at instruments under funding and planning law, and will examine aspects of nature conservation. Furthermore, possibilities for the development of the legal framework of photovoltaics installations that are no longer financially supported under the EEG will be considered as well as the framework and management of “floating-photovoltaics”.