Are Germany's green dreams dying stuck in a road red-tape traffic jam?

The torturously slow granting of transport permits for onshore wind turbines and other bureaucratic hurdles are becoming a bottleneck for Germany’s planned massive wind power expansion that could thwart ambitious targets while costing companies hundreds of millions of euros, the industry warned.

“We repeatedly experience transport permits becoming a real bottleneck,” Bärbel Heidebroek, president of Germany’s wind energy federation (BWE) told Habeck and an audience of wind power experts at the Husum Wind exposition earlier this month.

Issues with the transport of one component quickly trigger a cascade of delays, she added.

Sometimes, a nacelle doesn’t come to a construction site due to the lack of a transport permit, and subsequently, turbine blades can’t be delivered, Heidebroek explained, who herself is managing director at a wind developer, the Landwind Group.

Transportation permits for wind turbine components commonly take three months to get granted and have to be requested at several authorities in each German state they pass through, the BWE points out, an estimate confirmed by other wind groups and companies in the sector. If a turbine needs to be transported from northern Schleswig-Holstein to southern Bavaria, for example, bureaucrats in five states need to approve the process.

Hendrik Peterburs, head of global logistics at Enercon, said the approval process for transports is presenting the German OEM with “massive challenges.”

“Applications are often rejected without justification. The authorities are currently processing five-figure applications.”

During the first half of this year alone, some 70 Enercon turbines in Germany were delivered to their construction site with delays due to the approval backlog. If the approval situation remains unchanged, another 90 machines could become “delivery critical”, he said.

“We are threatened with additional costs of up to €115m ($121m) this year.”

To prevent this, the sector needs an acceleration of the approval process, more transparent processes at approval authorities, and better coordination between federal, state, and local authorities, he said.

“By introducing digital tools such as those in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, the application and approval process could also be accelerated and optimised.”

Processing transport applications in the Netherlands takes only five days, VDMA Power Systems, a group representing wind manufacturers, pointed out.

Part of the bottleneck for transportation permits seems to have been caused by Germany’s motorway operator, the Autobahn GmbH, which has to provide a qualified technical opinion on the navigability of an applied route (if it runs along a motorway) before state authorities grant permits.

The operator has recently started to phase in a digital tool for transport applications, and indeed has become quicker, the BWE said. Since then, the approval backlog has shifted to state authorities, it seems.

But the fact that an application has been processed unfortunately does not mean that it has been approved, but in many cases means that it has been rejected, Heidebroek said.

“We are seeing an increase in [automatic] rejections,” she said, adding that more restrictions have been added, for example regarding safety distances at bridges.

“At least in part, digitalisation has meant that applications are processed more quickly, but are rejected.”

“The claim that Autobahn GmbH issued predominantly negative statements cannot be confirmed. There was never any automatic cancellation, willful rejection, or non-processing of applications,” the spokeswoman said, contradicting the BWE’s statements.

“Negative statements from Autobahn GmbH are always justified. The statement shows the location and reason for the rejection.”

Ministry standoff

While the validity of the wind sector's complaints about the Autobahn remains disputed, the issue is further complicated by the standoff between the transport ministry and environmental and climate groups in recent months.

The ministry is headed by Volker Wissing from the Liberal Party (FDP), which this year has deliberately blocked or slowed down several initiatives by its Green coalition partner that would have advanced the energy transition – a behaviour not fostering trust in the renewables sector.

To transport one wind turbine, about 10 large and heavy transports are commonly needed, Dechant explained, as tower pieces, nacelles, or rotor blades all need to reach their destination. Dechant usually must hand in applications for several vehicles as applications have to be made for each – whether it is a Scania or Mercedes truck or tractor or other special vehicle, which all have diverging axis distances.

That means the transportation company has to seek between 30 and 50 permits just for one wind turbine. If construction cranes are added and one takes into consideration that several states have to be crossed, an average of 150 transportation permits are needed just for one wind turbine, the BWE estimates.

To keep such special vehicles on stand-by is very expensive, Dechant said, as ten of such vehicles cost some €7.5m to buy (the same as 63 normal trucks).

Logistics firms are squeezed between authorities brewing over applications and clients, who exert pressure as they need components at the construction site to be able to build.

“Our employees are in a sandwich situation here. All this is a stress factor for the staff. We have people quitting. They are not going to competitors. They are completely leaving the business.”

It is increasingly difficult to find both office staff and specialised drivers, he said, adding that some 25 to 30 people are needed in the transport of one single turbine.

'Things could get worse'

While the situation is dire already, it could get much worse.

For the planned wind capacity additions of 10GW per year from 2025 onwards, some 30,000 large and heavy transports per year have to be carried out, VDMA Power Systems estimates, plus another 80 heavy transports for cranes and installation machines for wind farms.

For those, some 120,000-150,000 permits would be required, per year the group estimates.

To avoid a bureaucratic nightmare, the VDMA is demanding a simplification of current rules.

Some 90,000 permits per year could simply be scrapped without endangering the safety of infrastructure or people, if certain rules were to be loosened, the group says.

Current regulation, for example, stipulates that the weight of a transport cannot differ more than 5%, even if the weight is less than originally expected, while the full length of a transport mustn’t differ more than 15 centimetres.

“The bureaucracy behind every trip and a week-long wait for approval hinders the smooth process,” VDMA Power Systems said, demanding to cut the current permitting time from 12 weeks to three.

The group also called for a simplification of road traffic regulations and associated administrative rules to reduce and speed up applications, and an acceleration of the expansion of transport infrastructure at the state level, taking into account heavy-duty transport needs.

It also suggests that a central geoinformation system is set up that all authorities can access, which should give information on bridge loads, dimensions, traffic, or maps.

“Authorities and users could work in one tool,” the VDMA hopes.

The transport ministry said it is already trying to simplify wind transport. The Autobahn GmbH is already easing some rules, for example, by diminishing the number of support vehicles to the absolutely necessary extent, the ministry said.

Also, a new ‘road traffic transport accompaniment ordinance’ will give states the right to allow companies to accompany heavy transports with ‘transport escorts’ of their own instead of state police as is the rule now.

It is unclear whether those changes will be enough. Quicker, less bureaucratic, and cheaper transport of wind turbines is urgently needed.

“If the situation does not change, the energy transition threatens to be thwarted on the roads,” Enercon’s Peterburs said.