Two Bavarian SPD politicians want to overturn the controversial Bavarian minimum distance rule for wind turbines before the Federal Constitutional Court: The Bundestag candidates Seija Knorr-Köning from Munich and Carolin Wagner from Regensburg filed a constitutional complaint there, according to their own statements. Its aim is for the court to annul the so-called 10H rule.
Since February 2014, the distance between a wind turbine and residential development in Bavaria has to be at least ten times (10H) the height – in the case of 200-meter-high systems, that is two kilometers. In order to be able to deviate from this, a municipal council must take an express resolution.
The SPD politicians base their constitutional complaint, among other things, on an opinion by the Leipzig environmental law expert Kurt Faßbender, which the SPD in the Landtag had commissioned and presented last week.
Faßbender comes to the conclusion that the 10H rule is no longer tenable after the much-noticed climate protection ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court this spring: In view of the central importance of wind energy expansion for the energy transition and for climate protection in Germany as a whole, the 10H rule needs one “constitutional reassessment”.
So far, Söder has stuck to 10H – with exceptions
“It is clear that we will never achieve the energy turnaround with the 10H regulation,” said Knorr-Köning and Wagner. The state government of Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is braking wind power “at the expense of the next generations, at the expense of our children”. That is why a constitutional complaint has now been submitted in Karlsruhe.
In view of the desired climate neutrality and the responsibility for nature and the environment, the Bavarian rule is unconstitutional. In the brief of the two it is stated: “The complainants threaten that they – and their children – will have to pay for the inaction of the current policy, as climate change is progressing. This is a particularly serious disadvantage.”
The Landtag SPD announced last week that it would, among other things, examine a new lawsuit before the Bavarian Constitutional Court – in May 2016 the court had confirmed the 10H rule. First, however, the state government wants to be given the opportunity to approve a bill to abolish the 10H rule in the state parliament.
So far, Söder has basically adhered to the 10H rule. In the state forest, on military training areas, but also during the so-called repowering of existing plants, in future only a minimum distance of 1000 meters will have to be maintained.
In a groundbreaking ruling in spring, the Federal Constitutional Court obliged the legislature to regulate the reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions for the period after 2030 in more detail in order not to endanger the freedom of future generations through climate-related restrictions. The federal government therefore had to step up on climate protection – the Bundestag passed the law in June. ctt yyby n1 nku lby