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6Chapter 1 • Current situation of offshore development in Germany1234567891011121314151617181920came into force in 1997. The first approval grantedon this basis was for the alpha ventus project. Otherapprovals followed, and experience gained in thecourse of these early approval procedures led to anumber of amendments to the Marine Facilities Ordinance,although the general structure remainedunchanged. One of the key principles of the MarineFacilities Ordinance is the freedom to applyfor construction of a windfarm anywhere in theEEZ, meaning that applications are not restrictedto specific areas. This distinguishes the German approachfrom that of neighbouring countries, wherethe state identifies areas in which windfarms can bebuilt and subsequently allocates them according tothe applicable procedure. BSH as the licensing authorityconsiders during the procedure whether anapproval may be granted.Spatial plans for both the North Sea and BalticSea EEZ were established in 2009. The aim is to ensuresustainable development and to reconcile socialand economic claims on the limited space with itsecological functions. To achieve this, priority areasand reserved areas were identified with regard to arange of uses such as shipping, exploitation of mineralresources, pipelines, submarine cables and energygeneration, including wind energy. The spatialplan has to be considered in the approval processand other uses may prevent the building of offshorewindfarms in certain areas. As a result, applicantsfor offshore windfarms began taking the spatialplans into account even before they came into force.In effect, this meant that some areas, such as shippinglanes and areas of nature conservation wereexcluded from consideration as potential areas forwindfarm construction.The latest spatial tool is the Offshore Grid Plan.This identifies offshore windfarms that are suitablefor collective grid connections and defines thenecessary cable routes and sites for connecting thewindfarms to the grid. It also contains the cableroutes for interconnecting cables to other Europeancountries and descriptions of possible joint connectionsto help ensure system security. The goal is toprovide for forward-looking and coordinated overallplanning (see Chap. 2).1.3 Marine Facilities OrdinanceThe 1997 Marine Facilities Ordinance defined twomajor reasons to refuse an application for construction:Threats to the marine environment (as perUNCLOS, Article 1) and threats to the safety andflow of traffic. Following the first few years of experiencewith the new Ordinance, the grounds forrefusals were refined and extended. Disruption ofbird migration was added as an example of a possiblethreat to the marine environment, and potentialthreats to national or allied defence are now alsonow explicitly included as a reason for refusal.A major revision of the Marine Facilities Ordinancecame into force in January 2012. As a result,a planning approval procedure now needs tobe carried out for projects not publicly announcedbefore the revision. The revised Ordinance broughtone key change: Additional interests (such as privateinterests) now have to be taken into accountand the various interests weighed against each another.Threats to the marine environment, shippingsafety or national or allied defence must still resultin refusal of an application, however, so the effect ofthis change will not be as fundamental as might bethought at first sight.An important change compared to the formerversion is the concentration effect. This principleas applied in planning approval procedures has theeffect that licensing for offshore windfarms is combinedin a single procedure and only one licence isneeded. For instance, planning approval covers questionsof species conservation under the Federal NatureConservation Act which were decided on in thepast by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation(BfN) but will now be part of the BSH licence. As aspecial administrative authority, however, BfN willcontinue to be closely involved throughout the planningapproval procedure as it has been in the past.Another important aim of the revised Ordinance wasto prevent the ‘hoarding’ of licences and to tightenthe requirements for prolongation of a licence.1.4 Approval processThe approval procedure consists of several phases(. Fig. 1.3). Following an application, two rounds