Project management

Compensation for energy and infrastructure projects

Large energy and infrastructure projects generate extensive compensation requirements across long routes and many areas of responsibility. greeNature manages these processes holistically, so that specialist planning, coordination with authorities, securing of land and monitoring interlock.

Our experience comes from major projects such as the SuedLink HVDC power line, with a route length of around 700 kilometres and a working area of around 70,000 hectares, and the Rhein-Main-Link, with around 600 kilometres and around 30,000 hectares. In such projects we coordinate compensation reliably across state borders.

Where compensation fails in major projects

The compensation requirement of a single project is a calculation task. The compensation requirement of a 700-kilometre route is an organisational problem. Technical expertise is rarely the bottleneck here. It is the interfaces: several planning approval sections each with their own permitting authority, sites in different natural regions and federal states with different assessment procedures, changing specialist consultants, construction time windows governed by breeding seasons and growing seasons, and a body of data that has to stay consistent over years.

Typical friction points we repeatedly see in such projects:

• Assessments that do not add up. Each section calculates on its own, and in the end the project-wide overall assessment that the authority wants to see is missing.
• Sites sought too late. Once the impact assessment is fixed, the requirement is fixed too. Available sites in the right natural region are then no longer negotiable, just scarce.
• Data states that drift apart. Specialist planning, site management and the authority work with different versions of the same geometry. Requests for further information follow.
• Responsibility that is orphaned after the permit is granted. Management and monitoring run for decades, but the project organisation ends when the facility goes into operation.

What we take on

greeNature manages compensation as a continuous strand alongside the construction project, from the first estimate of the requirement to the end of the commitment period.

1. Requirement and feasibility. We estimate the compensation requirement early, check the availability of sites in the affected natural regions, and show which shares are to be covered through eco-accounts and which through project-specific measures.
2. Authorities and procedures. We coordinate with the lower nature conservation authorities and the permitting authorities for each section, and keep the requirements of the respective state procedures apart.
3. Securing of land. We contribute sites from our own portfolio, negotiate with owners and managers, and secure the measures permanently under law.
4. Implementation and construction period. We plan implementation around the growing-season and construction-period windows, commission and supervise the contractors carrying out the work, and document progress.
5. Data management. All sites, assessments, contracts and monitoring results sit in a verified data model and are accessible to the client, specialist planning and the authority through a central geoportal.
6. Management and monitoring. We carry out the development and management measures over the entire commitment period and deliver the performance reviews at the set intervals.

Why it all comes together with us

The difference from a pure management service is that we bring the site with us. Anyone who only coordinates depends on a third party delivering a suitable site in time. We operate our own, officially approved eco-accounts and hold a land portfolio of more than 10,000 hectares across all 16 federal states. On top of that we have our own GIS and drone department, which keeps the data current on a day-to-day basis instead of buying it in externally.

Projects in which we have managed compensation include the SuedLink HVDC connection, with a route length of around 700 kilometres and a working area of around 70,000 hectares, and the Rhein-Main-Link, with around 600 kilometres and around 30,000 hectares. Clients include DB InfraGO, TenneT TSO, Amprion, Open Grid Europe and OMV Deutschland, among others.

The technical building blocks that come together in this kind of management are each described individually under Buy eco-points, Compensation measures, Species protection under CEF and FCS, Replacement afforestation and Geodata management.