Abstract

The Planning Law of the Energy Transition

The turnaround in energy policy has had a great impact on the electricity infrastructure in Germany. New sources of renewable energy need to be developed, electricity networks modified and expanded, and the question answered concerning the disposal of the old nuclear power plants and their waste. Meeting this challenge involves various political and legal areas. On the legal side, the legislature plans to use valued instruments to manage the relocation of renewable energies, and it has made legislative changes in some areas to strengthen these instruments. In order to carry out the integration of renewable energies into the network, Germany is going one step further in terms of the methods that it uses: as well as the well-known array of planning instruments available, it has decided to adopt special laws to subject the planned energy highways which are intended to extend across the Federal Republic to a special regime, so that they can be built as quickly as possible. Finally, the legislature intends to rely entirely on a legal solution with regard to the search for a suitable nuclear waste disposal facility, with the site selection law (Standortsauswahlgesetz) having been put in place to meet this particular challenge. The task of my contribution here is to demonstrate the different facets of the solutions adopted. In doing so, I shall not only describe the legal structures, but also sometimes point to their strengths and weaknesses.