The Bavarian State Forests have started looking for project developers for what will be Bavaria’s largest wind farm in the forest between Altötting and Burghausen in the foreseeable future. The companies are to plan and build 30 to 40 wind turbines in the Öttinger and Burghauser forests in order to supply the surrounding, particularly energy-hungry factories in the Bavarian chemical triangle with green electricity. The project developers must give the affected communities and their citizens the opportunity to participate economically in the planned wind farm, for example through cooperative models.
The two areas, for which interested companies can apply separately since Wednesday, are in the areas of seven different municipalities, whose councils have already spoken out in principle in favor of the project. The councils in two other smaller communities have so far reacted in a wait-and-see to critical manner, which is why the state forest in their areas is not part of the current plans.
All in all, the tender for the state forest covers an area of almost 1200 hectares and thus almost a quarter of the entire forest area in the Öttinger and Burghauser forest. Water protection areas, nature conservation areas and forest strips along the Alz and from larger roads are already excluded, a distance of at least 1000 meters must be maintained to residential buildings.
The state forests want to have selected the project developers and concluded contracts with them by the beginning of June. Only then can more detailed investigations of the areas in question and long-term wind measurements begin. There is angry resistance from a comparatively small group of critics against the project, which has been promoted for some time by the industry interest group in the chemical triangle and proclaimed in December by Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) as “the largest onshore wind project in Germany”.