According to the Thünen Institute in Braunschweig, this amounts to a daily decrease of over one hundred hectares until 2030. This is twice as much as in the past ten years when the area loss was 50 hectares per year.
This calculated loss is based on current political planning. According to the scientists, by 2030 more than 200,000 hectares will be needed for new construction and road building. They also state that the planned expansion of renewable energy sources, especially photovoltaic solar energy in open spaces, will require more than 100,000 hectares of open land by 2030.
At the same time, increasingly larger areas are needed for near-natural habitats and carbon sinks for biodiversity and climate protection. According to the scientists, such societal demands require changes in land use, such as reforestation, forest-rich planting, and rewetting of peatlands, which will cover more than 500,000 hectares in total.
The authors of the new Thünen study expect the end result to be a loss of more than 300,000 hectares of agricultural land. They anticipate that multiple uses of surfaces and areas can reduce some of the demand for space. Examples mentioned include solar canopy parks on parking garage roofs and in highway verges, as well as agricultural use of rewetted heathlands.