The new competition for land: unpacking Germany’s energy transition Dilemma

To achieve climate neutrality, Germany has set ambitious targets for decarbonizing its energy supply by 2038. The federal government is striving to realize this goal through a series of legislative changes across various policy domains. This evolving policy framework is accompanied by significant changes in land-use governance and the introduction of new policy instruments. In this context, the article critically examines the land-related implications of a sectorally driven decarbonization agenda for other sustainability objectives. It argues that while the German government has undertaken far-reaching efforts to reconfigure the energy system toward climate neutrality, it has not treated the territorial coordination of competing land-use demands as an explicit and complementary policy objective. Consequently, the various trade-offs among different sustainability aims have not been sufficiently addressed at the national level. This generates considerable adjustment pressures at subordinate levels of governance, which are explored in detail throughout this paper.