Ground-mounted photovoltaics along motorways and railways in Germany

On 11 January 2023, the Act for the Immediate Improvement of the Framework Conditions for Renewable Energies in Urban Planning Law came into force (BGBl 2023 I No. 6).
The Act includes so-called open-space PV installations in the list of privileged projects of § 35 para. 1 BauGB, which are located on an area along motorways or double-track railway lines of the superordinate network according to § 2b AEG and at a distance from these of up to 200 m.
In order to be able to better assess possible competition for land resulting from the amendment to the law, the Thünen Institute of Farm Economics carried out an initial analysis of the affected areas using geodata. For this, an interactive notebook from Observable was used, which allows you, the reader, to explore, analyse and visualise data. You are also welcome to ask questions and provide feedback on the analysis directly in the notebook.

You can find the analysis here (in German).

Thünen-Contact

• Christoph Pahmeyer
• Alexander Gocht