The future of impact assessment in Austria and Germany – streamlining impact assessment to save the planet?

ABSTRACT

Streamlining IA for low-carbon activities respectively to reach climate mitigation targets has become a new trend. In Austria and Germany, likewise in many other countries authorities and project developers discuss acceleration of impact assessment procedures looking particularly at public participation as one of the factors suspected to lead to prolongation of procedures. Additionally, also inspired by the EU provisions regarding climate change and renewable energies, experts discuss streamlining between regional and project level, thus between SEA and EIA. In this letter the authors look critically at the most recent developments related to the ambition to accelerate particularly the planning and commissioning of wind energy infrastructure and discuss both chances but also negative consequences and limitations. These are related to several factors such as the assessment at the appropriate planning level or the quality of data. The letter provides implications for IA practice and alternative suggestions which might support efficient impact assessment while maintaining or improving its quality particularly having in mind the various conflicting targets related to, i.e., biodiversity, human health and climate change mitigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Streamlining
• Austria
• Germany
• EIA
• SEA
• climate change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We here put climate-friendly in parenthesis as doubts exist in how far several of the discussed and as climate-friendly labeled technologies and projects actually contribute to a reduction of GHG emissions and are indeed climate-friendly.

2. An EIA is always required for projects of 20 turbines or more and after an initial screening process for projects of 3–19 turbines. For wind per projects of 1–2 turbines for screening nor an EIA is required (c.f. Geißler et al. 2013). However, wind power developers are even asking for conducting an EIA for 1–2 turbines arguing with an increase in legal certainty if a full EIA is conducted.

3. Comparable numbers for other project types do not exist.

4. LNG Streamlining Act in force since June 2022.

5. Draft for the amendment of the Federal Regional Planning Act (ROG) as of May 2022.

6. Amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) as of July 2022.

7. A study published in December 2022 by the German New Climate Institute concludes that the 11 planned LNG-terminals are ‘massively oversized’ and if all would be in operation would be in breach with the national climate targets and commitments under the Paris Agreement (Höhne et al. 2022).

8. With biocides being used in the floating LNG terminals and released into the sea during operation impact of these on the marine environment is highly disputed and has in Australia for example resulted in the denial of a permit for a floating LNG terminal at Crib Point in 2021 over concerns it could ‘damage internationally recognized wetlands’ (Victoria State Government 2021).

9. The permitting of the new Tesla electric car factory in Germany within about 2 years has been hailed as the new standard for complex new infrastructure projects unanimously by German politicians from all parties recently. „Tesla-speed“has been even coined as a new label for streamlined planning and permitting processes (e.g. Schmidt 2022; Fleischhauer 2022).

10. In Germany no archive of past IA documents exists. While the EIA portals provide information about EIA cases, documents are regularly taken offline after the end of the public consultation period (Köppel et al. 2018).

11. In Germany, other than in Austria, not even a systematic monitoring of the duration of EIA procedures and permitting processes takes place, which also the implementation of the EIA registry in Germany did not change as the start date of an EIA or the date of submission of the permit is not collected here.