Wind turbines can also be placed in forests. The Federal Constitutional Court declared a ban in Thuringia to be unconstitutional and void. The verdict has implications for all of Germany.
The federal states cannot ban wind turbines in the forest across the board. The judges at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe made a fundamental judgment on wind power in forests on Thursday. The focus of the proceedings was the Thuringian State Forest Act of December 2020, which prohibits the construction of wind turbines on forest areas.
The judges argued that the state lacked legislative power. The law is therefore unconstitutional and void. The Federal Building Act only allows the federal states to set a minimum distance between wind turbines and residential areas.
Private forest owners have filed suit against the law because they still wanted to set up wind turbines on their land. The Karlsruhe judges now upheld the lawsuit and declared the procedure inadmissible. The decision of the Karlsruhe judges has a signal effect because, according to an investigation by the scientific service of the Bundestag, there is also a complete ban on wind turbines in forest areas in several other federal states. The construction of the systems in the forest is often fraught with conflict.
The Erfurt state parliament passed the law two years ago with the votes of the CDU and AfD. The red-red-green minority government opposed the law but voted in favor of it, relying on the votes of the CDU for other decisions.
