It has been a good three years since Prime Minister and CSU leader Markus Söder announced the rapid construction of at least one hundred wind turbines in the Bavarian state forests. Even then, experts predicted that nothing would come of it as long as the 10-H rule applies. The controversial requirement states that the distance between each new wind turbine and the nearest village must be ten times the height of the turbine. That’s at least two kilometers. Apparently, Söder had not considered that there are very few state forests in Bavaria that meet this requirement. In fact, nothing has come of the Prime Minister’s announcement so far. Not a single new wind turbine has been installed in the state forests since 2019.
But now the Bavarian State Forests (BaySF), which manage the state forests, are expecting a run on the state forests. Because Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) has forced Söder and the wind power opponents in the CSU with his wind power on land law to weaken their previous blockade policy against wind power at least somewhat. According to the new wind power law, which Building Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) wants to bring to the state parliament after the summer break, the distance between new wind turbines and towns in the forests in Bavaria is to be reduced to a thousand meters, among other things. As a spokesman for the state-owned company says, the BaySF will soon be preparing “for a very high level of demand from investors, project developers and operators”.
Where the demand is high, the competition is fierce and anger is programmed. According to the spokesman, the BaySF want to keep the latter as small as possible. “Our goal is to allocate possible wind turbine locations publicly, transparently, without discrimination and, above all, quickly,” he says. “That’s why we decided on a bidding process.” Above all, the communities on whose territory the systems are to be erected and the population should benefit from them. The model for the bidding process is the green-black government of Baden-Württemberg, where the expansion of wind power has been massively pushed for longer than in Bavaria. ForstBW recently put out to tender for wind turbine locations with a total area of 1200 hectares of state forest for around 39 turbines. This was already the third round of tenders. In the previous two, locations with a total area of 2800 hectares were allocated for around 90 wind turbines. The interest of planners, operators and investors was great. The number of offers regularly exceeded the number of advertised locations many times over.
Residents should benefit from the wind power
According to the BaySF, they want to give the interests of the affected municipalities and the population a particularly high priority in their selection process. “This means that in the first step we identify forest areas that are suitable for wind turbines and agree on the general conditions of the tender with the respective local community,” says the spokesman. The latter affects, for example, the number of wind turbines, but also very centrally a financial participation of the local population in the systems. Because then the residents can also benefit from the wind power through the returns that their participation generates.
In the second step, the BaySF offer the areas including tendering modalities on their website. “Of course, we expect the bidders to take the specifications into account in their offers,” says the spokesman, “and in particular to provide specific information on the opportunities for the local population to participate.” At the end of the selection process, a so-called location assurance contract is concluded with the successful bidder. “In this way, we ensure that only project partners are selected who fulfill the will of the local communities,” says the spokesman. The state government made this a requirement for the BaySF long before Söder became Prime Minister so that the state-owned company could enter the wind power business.