In terms of the project development process in Germany, France and Spain, what order do the following steps usually occur in?

• environmental approval
• land use permits (site plan approval and/or building permit)
• grid connection agreement (assuming 2 steps to this process: the initial agreement and final contract)
• FIT contract

In France for wind power: after many changes, the first requirement for project developers is to get the building permit authorization which requires an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study and a public enquiry and... around 27 specific authorizations !

For grid connection, I think you can apply as soon as you received the receipt of building permit demand.

Building permits are delivered by government representatives (the "Préfets" created by Napoleon the first). Wind opponents like to attack delivered building permits, and new regulations are said to be prepared for wind energy building permits, may be not in the philosophy asked by the 2001 renewable energy European directive ("directive" = "Law") or the coming 2009 renewable directive which both say mandatory to member states to simplify and to accelerate procedures for authorization of new RE projects. In other words: if you (GEA) alliance want to explain what not to do for projects authorisation, you can have a detailed look to the French story... For large PV plants, at the moment building permits are simpler (EIA not mandatory, but many developers start to make simplified EIA in order to have good arguments against PV opponents (we start to enjoy such new opponents too...). A good decision (not taken yet in France) should be to act that wind energy investments are "public interest investments" with priority and simplified and adapted building permits procedures. Such a decision was said to be implemented in the 90's in Germany and contributed to the wind energy German success.

ARTs contracts in France are very easy to get compared to the building permit (automatic procedure and mandatory power purchase agreement from the utility managing the relevant grid as soon as you get the formal contract agreement from the Ministry in charge of energy, the MEEDDAT = Ministère de l'écologie, de l'énergie, du développement durable et de l'aménagement du territoire, full stop).