Reduce land consumption, protect residents from noise: SRU criticises amendment to building law
Published
15.02.2017
SRU member Prof Dr Messari-Becker speaks today in the Bundestag as an expert on the amendment to the German Building Code. The SRU welcomes the new "urban area" category. However, the level of noise protection in these areas must not be lowered. It is also problematic that the amendment is also intended to promote construction activity on the outskirts of settlements.
"We must not go backwards when it comes to land consumption. The amendment should therefore not make it easier to build in outlying areas," emphasises Prof. Messari-Becker. The German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) therefore recommends dispensing with accelerated procedures for development plans on the edge of existing settlements. The planned Section 13b should be cancelled without replacement.
The introduction of the new area category "urban area" in the Land Use Ordinance makes sense. The amendment provides for the immission guide values to be raised by 3 decibels. This corresponds to roughly a doubling of the sound power. Such an increase in the limit values should be rejected for health reasons. In addition, building densification should enhance urban open spaces as meeting and recreational areas and promote people's health. At the same time, urban green spaces must be strengthened in order to promote ecological qualities such as air pollution control, avoidance of so-called heat islands and biodiversity.
The written statement on the hearing of the Environment and Building Committee is available on the SRU website: www.umweltrat.de.
The German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) has been advising the German government on environmental policy issues for 45 years. The Council's composition of seven professors from various disciplines ensures a scientifically independent and comprehensive assessment, both from a scientific and technical perspective as well as from an economic, legal and health science perspective.
Source: PM of the German Advisory Council on the Environment, Berlin
A broad alliance of more than 50 large and medium-sized companies and business associations is calling on the parties in the exploratory talks to make climate protection the central task of the future German government.
Subscribers to the declaration include major companies active in Germany, larger SMEs and associations from a wide range of sectors. They include 6 DAX 30 companies and well-known names such as Aldi Süd, Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Telekom, Hochtief, Nestlé, SAP and many more. Energy-intensive industrial companies and coal-fired power plant operators are also supporting the appeal, including Siemens, EnBW, E.ON and Papier- und Kartonfabrik Varel. Many of the subscribing companies are not direct winners of decarbonisation or the energy transition. However, the subscribers promise to play their part in climate protection. Coordinators of the declaration are the business associations Stiftung 2° and B.A.U.M. as well as the development and environmental organisation Germanwatch.
One third of homeowners plan to install in the next twelve months
High electricity prices fuel demand for cheap solar energy
Online survey of 1,000 people - representative survey by age and gender
Germany is increasingly becoming a solar country: this is shown by the Solarwatt Market Study 2023, which the Hamburg-based opinion research institute Appinio conducted in March on behalf of the leading photovoltaic provider. According to the study, 84 percent of homeowners in Germany already have their own photovoltaic system or want to purchase one to generate clean solar energy. Solarwatt conducted the market study for the second time this year after 2022. For the representative survey by age and gender, a total of 1,000 German homeowners were surveyed online in the period from 7 to 14 March 2023.
One third of homeowners plan solar installation in the next twelve months
Just under a third of homeowners who do not currently use solar power are even planning to install a system in the next twelve months (31.8 percent). In the context of the first Solarwatt market study in March 2022, around 25 percent of those surveyed still stated that they wanted to install their own photovoltaic system in the next twelve months. A photovoltaic system (18.2 percent) is already installed in around one fifth of single-family homes in Germany. In 2022, the share was still 14.6 percent, which corresponds to an increase of only 3.6 percent in the past twelve months.
The Solarwatt Market Study 2023 also shows that the main motive for German homeowners to buy a photovoltaic system is currently the potential to save on energy costs (68.2 percent), followed by the desire for more independence from the energy market (61.8 percent) and the desire to do something good for the environment (43.8 percent). "A ten-kilowatt-peak solar system consisting of durable glass-glass solar modules generates clean energy for around ten cents per kilowatt hour from the moment it is installed - and for more than thirty years," explains Solarwatt managing director Detlef Neuhaus. With such a system, homeowners could save tens of thousands of euros over the entire period.
Solar expansion: industry, politics and investors join forces
According to Neuhaus, the Solarwatt Market Study 2023 confirms the population's sustained desire for solar power: "The use of a solar system makes absolute sense for homeowners from an economic and ecological perspective. Moreover, the technology is now fully mature. But if we want to keep and build up the added value here in Germany and Europe in the future, we need a solidarity between industry, politics and investors. Only in this way can we establish a strong solar industry on the old continent in the long term." Solarwatt is one of the pioneers and innovation drivers of the European solar industry with 30 years of experience. In the meantime, every fifth solar system up to ten kilowatt peak in Germany comes from Solarwatt.
The state of Lower Saxony has launched a new funding program for battery storage. The funding guidelines were published in the Lower Saxony Ministerial Gazette on 21 October. Applications can be submitted to the NBank with immediate effect.
The grant funding of up to 40 percent of the net investment costs of a battery storage system applies in connection with the new construction or expansion of PV systems (at least 4 kWp). In addition to natural persons, grant recipients can also be companies, legal entities, municipalities and many others.
In addition to the subsidy, bonuses can be granted for e-charging points, PV systems over 10 kWp and the roofing of parking areas or other structural facilities with elevated PV systems.
The funding programme is carried out as a support programme for the economy in the context of the Covid19 pandemic. The grantees are to make investments and thus contribute to the promotion of the economy. The programme is therefore limited in time, Applications can be submitted until 30.9.2022.
Parliamentary State Secretary Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter of the BMUB (3rd from left) hands over the grant notification for 10.4 million euros to SWLB. On the photo: Ursula Keck (Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB and Mayor of Kornwestheim, left), Werner Spec (Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB and Mayor of the City of Ludwigsburg, 2nd from left), Managing Director of SWLB, Bodo Skaletz (3rd from right), Steffen Bilger (Member of the Bundestag, 2nd from right), Jürgen Walter (Member of the Bundestag, right).
Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim is building one of the largest solar thermal plants in Germany with a collector area of over 10,000 m². The way is clear for another forward-looking project in Ludwigsburg: Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim GmbH (SWLB) has won the funding call for municipal climate protection model projects as part of the national climate protection initiative of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety in Berlin.
Their funding application for the SolarHeatGrid model project for the 'construction and connection of one of the largest solar thermal plants in Germany to an optimised heating network', in which the City of Ludwigsburg is involved as a cooperation partner, was approved. The official handover of the Municipal Climate Protection Model Project grant to Bodo Skaletz, Managing Director of SWLB, took place on 12 May 2017 by Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, in the presence of the Lord Mayor of the City of Ludwigsburg and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB, Werner Spec, and the Lord Mayor of the City of Kornwestheim and Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Stadtwerke.
"In terms of the amount of funding, our solar thermal project is the front-runner in the ranking of the seven projects that were also approved. The federal government is contributing 10.4 million euros to the realisation of Ludwigsburg's large-scale project, which should inspire imitation throughout Germany," says a delighted Bodo Skaletz, Managing Director of SWLB.
"This renewal of the district heating network with solar heat is particularly forward-looking with regard to the feasibility of municipal heat supply with renewable energies. Swapping fossil for renewable - it works. I congratulate Ludwigsburg on this major high-tech piece of the puzzle, also in terms of CO2 savings and improved energy efficiency," confirms Parliamentary State Secretary Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter.
"The 'SolarHeatGrid' is an important building block in the implementation of our overall energy concept for Ludwigsburg," explains Mayor Werner Spec. "We are thus significantly expanding our heat supply on a renewable basis and linking it across municipal boundaries. This is entirely in the spirit of sustainable settlement development: as cities, we must continue to commit ourselves locally with all our strength to environmental and climate protection."
The official start of this lighthouse project is 1 June 2017. The model project is scheduled to take a total of three years. As part of the project, the existing Ludwigsburg district heating network, which already provides heat for large parts of the city using mainly renewable raw materials, will be merged with the Rotbäumlesfeld, Technische Dienste Ludwigsburg (Gänsfußallee 21) and Kornwestheim-Nord networks, which are currently still supplied with fossil fuels. The construction of the solar thermal plant in connection with a large heat storage tank, which is to be built at the location of the CHP plant, will additionally feed high-quality, regeneratively generated heat into the expanded interconnected grid. This will further increase the amount of heat from renewable energies. With the help of the heat storage facility, the energy generated will also be available when there is little or no solar radiation.
The base load heat of the fossil-fuelled heating centres of the individual grids can thus be replaced by the largely regeneratively generated heat of the expanded interconnected grid. Approximately five kilometres of new district heating pipes will be laid over the next three years to connect the solar thermal system and the interconnected grid. In addition to the CO2 savings that will be achieved through the growing share of renewable energies in the expanded district heating network, the declared goal of the large-scale project is to increase energy efficiency. "In order to ensure that energy is used as efficiently as possible, it is not only the heat generation and distribution by SWLB that is decisive, but also the consumer side," Skaletz explains and adds: "As part of the network interconnection, measures are therefore to be implemented to reduce the so-called return temperatures, on which the performance of our district heating network depends to a large extent."
SWLB submitted the funding application in November 2016. The project aims to increase the share of renewable energies in the district heating network and to actively promote local climate protection and the energy transition at the local level by reducing CO2 emissions. More information on the municipal climate protection model project at: www.swlb.de/solar-heat-grid
PM of the Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim from 12.05.2017
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The state of Lower Saxony has launched a new funding program for battery storage. The funding guidelines were published in the Lower Saxony Ministerial Gazette on 21 October. Applications can be submitted to the NBank with immediate effect.
