The ministries have drawn up an agreed approach for developing an environmentally sound expansion of onshore wind energy, the Environment Ministry said, ahead of a press conference planned for Monday.

The goal of the agreement was to be able to grant planning permission for new wind turbines rapidly and in a legally secure manner while maintaining the high environmental protection standards required by European law, it said, though it gave no further details.

Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck, both members of the Greens, will present the key points of the agreement next week.

The need to accelerate Germany’s expansion of renewable energies while maintaining high environmental protection standards has been a contentious issue for the two ministries for years.

However, the faster expansion of onshore wind power plays a key role in achieving the German government’s climate protection targets and, crucially in light of the war in Ukraine, in reducing its dependence on Russian fossil fuel imports.

Germany lacks land designated for the construction of wind turbines, and attempts to change this have often been prevented by species protection concerns.

This was demonstrated in a report produced by a state and federal committee on the status of wind power expansion last October, which also found that the resistance to the expansion of wind power on the environmental grounds has been particularly entrenched at the state level.