Planning and approval procedures are key elements in environmental, nature, and climate protection. Gains in effectiveness and time in this area can significantly improve socially necessary processes. The previous federal government therefore prioritized initiatives to speed up approval and licensing regimes in the infrastructure sector, and the current federal government is also pushing ahead with these initiatives. However, changes in EU law associated with acceleration initiatives can lead to a reduction in the material standards of environmental and species protection, for example by eliminating the environmental impact assessment at the project level for a large number of energy transition projects. The question arises as to how planning and approval processes can be accelerated based on the current legal framework without neglecting nature, environmental, and species protection.
Access to environmental information is still inadequate in some areas in Germany; in particular, environmental information is not published sufficiently or is not collated centrally. The administrative structure of environmental data is federal in nature, which leads to a large number of portals with partially overlapping content. The practical implications of this information structure are clearly evident in approval practices. It is often not possible to reuse data obtained for later procedures because there is no overview of the data collected or because this is not provided for by law.
To address this problem, the Federal Environment Agency has created umwelt.info, a portal designed to facilitate access to relevant, verified, and well-documented environmental data. The portal is intended to significantly increase the transparency and findability of environmental information.
With the “Accompanying research umwelt.info to support the acceleration of planning,” we worked together with IFOK and hrd.consulting to identify measures through which umwelt.info can make an effective contribution to accelerating planning and approval procedures without compromising environmental standards. The aim was to identify and prioritize specific development options for the portal. In this context, UfU is responsible for dealing with legal issues.
At the start of the project, it was necessary to systematically build up knowledge about planning and approval procedures and current legislation on acceleration. At the same time, we networked with relevant multipliers in order to gain a sound understanding of the existing processes and challenges. In addition, the key target groups for umwelt.info in the context of planning and approval procedures were identified.
On this basis, the specific information-related needs of the actors involved could be precisely identified. The insights gained then served as the basis for deriving targeted measures that umwelt.info can implement to offer users tangible added value within the procedural processes and thus contribute to accelerating planning and approval procedures without compromising environmental standards.
