The Bundestag on Thursday approved legislation aimed at accelerating the expansion of geothermal plants and updating the legal framework for developing a climate-neutral heating supply. Geothermal energy refers to the use of heat from beneath the Earth’s surface to generate electricity, heating, and cooling. To tap into geothermal potential more quickly, planning and approval procedures for individual projects will now be digitalized, simplified, and sped up.
The law also seeks to make the planning and construction of heating pipelines easier and quicker in order to promote the use of waste heat, for example, from data centers, for climate protection and efficiency reasons. Bureaucratic barriers are to be removed for this purpose. Approvals for hydrogen storage facilities must be issued within two years. In addition, the expansion of battery storage systems will be supported through simplified planning regulations.
The German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) stated that the Geothermal Acceleration Act creates urgently needed procedural simplifications and strengthens the framework for climate-neutral heating. The association described the planned measures to speed up approval procedures, such as fixed deadlines for authorities to check application completeness, as particularly positive.
The BDEW also welcomed the legal clarification that geothermal plants will now be classified as “projects of overriding public interest,” calling it “a strong signal.” It further praised the decision to include the association’s request to extend this classification to heating pipelines.
However, the association criticized the lack of clear regulations safeguarding the priority of drinking water extraction over geothermal use. It warned that reliable alignment of climate protection and drinking water protection requires a definitive legal clarification ensuring the priority of public water supply.
Still, the BDEW noted positively that battery storage systems built in connection with renewable energy generation will no longer require a preceding development plan. This, it said, creates the conditions for such systems—with their significant potential to support grid stability, to be approved and constructed more easily.
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