On 26 September, the Bundestag passed the Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz IV. The Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft (BDEW) is now calling for a separate Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz for the energy industry, as Kerstin Andreae, Chairwoman of the BDEW Executive Board, explains in a statement.
„With the Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz IV, there was a great opportunity to significantly accelerate the energy transition by making things much easier for companies. However, this Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz falls far too short and unfortunately hardly takes into account the many proposals from the energy industry. This is disappointing for the companies that are doing everything they can to secure the energy supply as well as to speed up the energy transition.
Our industry has developed numerous practical proposals on relevant topics as part of an extensive process and made them available to politicians. We find it incomprehensible that these proposals have hardly been taken into account so far and that there are no clear statements on their implementation in the specific individual laws.
The approach is fundamentally correct: we must work resolutely to review and reduce the bureaucracy that has grown over the years. Reducing bureaucracy is a long-distance run and requires perseverance. The fact that an annual update of the Bureaucracy Reduction Act is planned as part of the growth initiative is therefore to be welcomed.
However, a general cross-industry law is not the right format for the complexity of the energy industry. We need a separate initiative that starts exactly where the pressure to act is highest: in the energy industry, which is confronted with a particularly high bureaucratic burden and at the same time immense pressure to transform (BDEW dossier BDEW-Dossier „Fakten zur Bürokratie in der Energiewirtschaft“).
We are therefore calling for a specific bureaucracy relief law for the energy sector that bundles the various approaches in order to clear the jungle of reporting obligations and requirements and create real relief for the energy industry. Our second demand is also central: the introduction of a central IT platform that enables the coordinated fulfilment of information and reporting obligations and streamlines processes. This could already achieve considerable progress.
One thing is very clear: for the energy transition to succeed, companies need significantly leaner procedures and far fewer bureaucratic hurdles. The Energy Industry Act alone provides for 135 separate reporting obligations, for which BDEW has already submitted specific proposals for improvement - and that is just one law among more than 15,000 relevant standards for the energy industry.“
