Bavaria announces new climate protection act but leaves doors shut for wind power

The German state of Bavaria wants to be climate-neutral by 2040 and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 65 percent by 2030, according to the revised Climate Protection Act, passed by the state cabinet on 15 November. The state government has announced 50 new measures (adding up to 125 measures in total) that will supplement Bavaria’s existing climate protection policy, public broadcaster BR reports. In 2022 alone, one billion euros will be made available for these, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder said. One of the new measures will be mandatory solar roofs on commercial buildings – but not on all new buildings, as Söder had previously said. There will be no changes to the controversial 10H distance rule for wind turbines. Because of this rule, which says that the distance between a wind turbine and the nearest residential area must be at least ten times the height of the turbine, wind power expansion in Bavaria has been on hold for several years now.

The majority of Germany’s 16 federal states have put climate action legislation in place. The federal German parliament (Bundestag) greenlit the first national Climate Action Law in mid-November 2019, which was amended in 2021 after the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) found that its targets were not specific and ambitious enough. In July 2021, NGO Environmental Action Germany (DUH) launched new lawsuits against three German states, including Bavaria, for not having sufficient intermediate targets for greenhouse gas reductions and for not specifying the instruments and measures required to reach them.