North Rhine-Westphalia Pushes Law Change To Unlock Larger Floating Solar

• Germany’s NRW files a Bundesrat motion to relax strict surface-area and shoreline limits on floating PV, aiming to turn quarry lakes into gigawatts of clean power.

North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has filed a Bundesrat motion that could blow Germany’s tiny floating-solar market wide open. Submitted on 25 May 2025, the resolution urges Berlin to scrap the nationwide caps that let arrays cover no more than 15 % of an artificial lake and demand a 40-metre setback from every shore under §36 of the Water Resources Act. Environment minister Oliver Krischer calls those blanket limits “uneconomical,” especially on the state’s hundreds of deep gravel pits and quarry ponds.

The market’s stagnation proves his point. Germany hosts just 16 operational floating-PV plants totalling 37.9 MW, six of them in NRW (13.6 MW). Even the country’s largest, the 5.6-MW Wesel-Bislich array, still blankets only a sliver of its lake, illustrating how today’s rules squander available surface.

Yet the upside is huge. A Fraunhofer ISE/RWE study last year pegged Germany’s technical floating-solar potential at 45 GW if coverage limits were lifted to 35 %; even under the existing 15 % rule, about 14 GW could be built.

NRW’s proposal seeks a “flexible, ecology-first framework”: larger plants would be green-lit where depth, water quality and biodiversity allow, while floating PV would gain “privileged project” status in planning law—putting it on equal footing with rooftop and agrivoltaics.

If the motion clears committee, it could reach a plenary vote before the summer recess. Developers already have 10-MW-plus projects on the drawing board in places like Wachtendonk; without legal reform those schemes shrink to 4 MW or stall entirely. Krischer argues the initiative offers a dual dividend: “Floating PV lets us generate clean power without sealing off farmland and gives post-mining landscapes a new lease on life.” Should the Bundesrat agree, NRW expects a first wave of larger arrays to be tender-ready by early 2026—nudging the state toward its goal of sourcing 30 % of electricity from solar by 2030.