TenneT, based in the Netherlands, and TransnetBW, from the German state of Baden-Württemberg, which are planning SuedLink, emphasized Wednesday that they intended to discuss the proposed pathway with citizens and leaders of affected communities before seeking permits to erect the 60-to-70-meter-high transmission towers that would hold the lines.

“We are at the very beginning of the planning stage,” Lex Hartman, who sits on TenneT’s management board, said in a statement. “The corridor is not definitive, and we need feedback from citizens and communities to be able to plan this important link.”

TenneT and TransnetBW plan to begin talks this year and hope to have the line completed by 2022, the companies said. The line is needed to transport electricity generated by existing or planned wind farms along Germany’s northern seacoast, carrying it to the industrial southern states, which are home to many of the nuclear generators that will be decommissioned.

While large-scale energy projects in some other countries, like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that has been politically divisive in the United States, have often led to protests from citizens concerned about potential dangers, Germany’s Energiewende, or energy transformation, has enjoyed widespread citizen support.

Last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government passed a law aimed at speeding up the expansion and upgrade of the nation’s power grid, which are needed if the country is to reach its goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2022. The plan envisions some 36 projects with projected costs of at least 10 billion euros, or $13.5 billion.