If Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) wants to fulfill his promise that Bavaria will be climate-neutral by 2040, then thousands of residential buildings in Bavaria must be equipped with photovoltaic systems every week and solar parks the size of 160 soccer fields must be connected to the grid. Two new wind turbines also have to be set up every week. In addition, a new substation has to be built every week and the expansion of the power grids has to be accelerated dramatically. This is just an excerpt from the list of tasks that results from a report by the Bavarian energy industry from Söder’s climate protection promise, which is now also anchored in the new Bavarian climate protection law.
The President of the Bavarian Municipal Council and Mayor of Abensberg in Lower Bavaria, Uwe Brandl (CSU), has always been one of the skeptics that Söder’s promises can be kept. “Realistically speaking, the goals can hardly be achieved,” says Brandl. But he also says that the energy transition should not fail because of the municipalities in Bavaria. Above all, the many small communities in the rural regions want to push them to the best of their ability. In them – as Brandl and his colleagues have been asserting for a long time – there is enormous potential for electricity from wind and sun. So that it can be realized, the community day has now formulated a list of demands on the state government.
On the one hand, Söder and his cabinet should finally formulate Bavaria-wide expansion targets for all renewable energies and combine them with the necessary grid expansion. Brandl also includes the “overdue simplification and standardization of approval procedures”. Solar power plants on less disputed areas, for example, should be exempted from the previously very complex and lengthy land use planning process. It should be replaced by a simple consent procedure. However, clear priorities must also be set. In order to keep land consumption as low as possible, photovoltaics on the roof should have priority over solar power plants on agricultural land.
In addition, Brandl demands that the previously voluntary agreements on the financial participation of the municipalities and their population in new eco-power plants be replaced by a legal right to do so. He is not only interested in promoting the acceptance of the systems. But also for an economic compensation. “Because the energy transition changes above all the intervention in our rural regions,” he says. The 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour of green electricity that the owners of new large green power plants are supposed to pay to the respective local authority according to the federal government’s new Renewable Energy Sources Act is at best a start. Brandl also demands a kind of earnest money for the communities, as is already the case in Brandenburg. There, municipalities automatically receive an additional 10,000 euros per year for each wind turbine in their area.
Brandls Abensberg is a good example of the potential for the energy transition in the countryside: the town of 14,000 on the northern edge of the Hallertau already produces one and a half times as much electricity with its renewable energy plants as it consumes mostly with photovoltaic systems. “That’s because we don’t have enough wind to make wind turbines worthwhile, and hydropower doesn’t give much either,” says Brandl. A solar power plant is currently in the approval process on Abensberger Flur. It will eventually cover an area of 50 hectares. The end of the Abensberg expansion goals is far from being reached. In the foreseeable future, the city wants to produce three times more electricity than it consumes.