“Transmission highway SuedLink enters next stage”

The preparation procedure for building Germany’s high-voltage transmission highway SuedLink has entered a crucial stage, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Welt Online. Following submission of the sectoral planning application for SuedLink’s last segment in the southern federal state of Baden-Württemberg, German federal grid agency BNetzA can now start the formal approval procedure for the 800-kilometre-long power line meant to transfer electricity from Germany’s windy north to industrial centres in the south, the article says. 
In a separate article on Welt Online, dpa reports that about 3,000 people forming a human chain in the central German state of Thuringia protested against SuedLink’s construction. The transmission highway made the federal state the “pack animal” of German energy policy, protesters lamented according to the article.

Read the articles in German here and here.

For more information, read the CLEW news digest entry Merkel on grid expansion: “We’re behind it at all levels”.