Berlin. Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche (CDU) plans to limit the amount of leases for wind energy areas. In your house's draft for the amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), lease payments are limited to 3.5 percent of the annual turnover of a wind turbine.
This could reduce the costs of EEG funding by billions over the next two decades, according to a report from the Research Center for the Energy Industry (FfE), which is available to Handelsblatt. Taxpayers and the state would benefit from this, it explains in three scenarios.
To date there is no limit to the rental amount. There are no statistics on the currently agreed rental rates for wind energy areas. Values between five and ten percent are quoted in the industry. However, contract designs with flat-rate payments are not uncommon.
Nominally, rents have risen sharply in recent years. A decade ago, leases of 100,000 euros were considered an outlier. Market participants are currently reporting that a peak of 400,000 euros per year per wind turbine is due. However, there is no systematic recording of leases.
According to the FfE report, savings of up to 37 billion euros would be possible by 2045 if the 3.5 percent cap were introduced. The federal budget would be relieved by a corresponding amount.
According to the calculations, with a rental rate of five percent, there will be cumulative savings of three billion euros by 2045. Compared to a lease rate of ten percent, the costs would be 13 billion euros lower. At a rental rate of 20 percent, the savings potential reaches a value of 37 billion euros, according to the experts.
The beneficiaries of rising rents are the owners of land used for agriculture and forestry, including private owners and state lessors, such as state forests.
According to the FfE report, with a rental rate of 3.5 percent, annual rental income of 24,000 to 37,000 euros per wind turbine remains with the landowner. The range results from the different assumptions regarding the electricity production of a wind turbine: depending on the quality of the location, the electricity yield varies.
Taxpayers ultimately have to pay the rent. According to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the operators of wind farms receive a guaranteed remuneration for the electricity that they feed into the power grid: If the income from the marketing of the electricity is below the guaranteed remuneration, the state makes up the difference.
The leases are part of the operators’ cost calculations. These must apply for EEG funding in tenders. If the rental level increases, operators will have to submit higher bids. Ultimately, this makes electricity subsidized by EEG more expensive. The costs of EEG funding are paid from the federal budget.
The report was commissioned by the Association of Municipal Companies (VKU), which has long been campaigning for a limit on leases. VKU general manager Ingbert Liebing told the Handelsblatt: “Every euro that does not go into lease payments relieves the burden on the federal budget and thus on taxpayers without endangering the expansion goals.”
A cap on leases is therefore “a powerful lever” for greater cost efficiency. “It is not the taxpayer’s job to subsidize the standard of living of land owners to the tune of millions through the EEG,” said Liebing.
Member companies of the VKU are the municipal utilities. They are driving forward wind farm projects across Germany and are therefore interested in low rents.
The landowners see things differently. On October 1st, the Working Group of German Forest Owners' Associations (AGDW) presented a legal opinion from the former constitutional judge Udo di Fabio.
In it, di Fabio argues that the planned lease cap encroaches on the property, contractual and professional freedom of the landowners and violates the principle of proportionality. In addition, there are considerable doubts about the compatibility with the principle of equality and with European law requirements.
Di Fabio points out that there was a phase of space shortage until 2024 with correspondingly high rents. In the meantime, supply and demand on the property market have already changed, so a cap is no longer necessary.
In fact, the legislature has ensured a larger supply of land through various measures, such as the targeted designation of additional land for wind power and by simplifying planning and approval procedures. It is said in the industry that rents have tended to fall again in the past two years.
The EEG amendment still has to be passed by the Bundestag. The Federal Cabinet approved the EEG amendment at the end of July, and the first reading in the Bundestag took place at the end of September. There is no date for the second and third reading yet. What is clear, however, is that the amended law must come into force on January 1, 2027. The funding regime of the currently valid EEG is only approved under state aid law until the end of 2026.
