Germany’s main utility and water industry lobby on June 5, 2026 called on the government to change inheritance tax rules for agricultural land used for ground-mounted solar panels, saying the current system is creating legal uncertainty for leases and can make the tax bill larger than the income from the project itself.

Kerstin Andreae, who spoke for the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, said land leased for PV installations loses its status as an agricultural or forestry asset for tax purposes. That reclassification, the BDEW said, can strip away inheritance and gift tax advantages and leaves landowners and investors trying to price a long-term solar lease without knowing whether the land will be treated as farm property or something else when an estate is settled.

The timing matters because Germany is still absorbing a fast-growing solar market. The country added 16.2 GW of solar PV capacity last year, and in the first three months of 2026 ground-mounted solar was the only PV segment to post year-on-year growth. It accounted for nearly half of the 3.51 GW added in that period, underscoring how important the land-based project pipeline has become even as policy friction builds around it.

The BDEW’s concern is not about the panels themselves but about the land beneath them. In its German-language paper, the association said one fix would be to keep agricultural and forestry classification in place while a PV system is operating on the land. Another would be to create a separate incentive rule for ground-mounted solar, such as a flat-rate valuation discount or a tax-free allowance. The group said that without clearer treatment, lease agreements become more complicated and expansion slows.

That leaves the government with a practical question rather than a theoretical one: whether it wants to preserve a tax regime that treats solar leases like a change of land use, or rewrite it to reflect the way German farmers and investors are now using their fields. For now, the BDEW has made its case, but there is no confirmation that Berlin will adopt any of the changes it proposed.