Czech municipalities and regions reject bill to accelerate renewable energy deployment, saying it harms them

Municipalities and regions reject the current bill to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy sources (RES). They say it will harm municipalities and burden regions. They also complain that the state did not consult them sufficiently. Representatives of local governments have therefore called for an open expert debate and for the bill to be redrafted. Representatives of the Union of Local Self-Governments of the Czech Republic, the Association of Regions of the Czech Republic and the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic said so in a joint press release today.

The bill was drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in cooperation with the ministries of the environment and regional development. It is currently undergoing the consultation process. Its aim is to generally simplify the conditions for permitting the construction of facilities that produce green electricity. CTK is seeking comment from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The document follows a government resolution from April this year, in which the cabinet approved a process for designating so-called acceleration zones for the construction of renewable energy sources. These will be areas where permits for solar or wind farms can be issued more quickly. Preparation and permitting of construction in these zones is expected to take up to 12 months.

However, representatives of municipalities and regions say the current bill is unclear and incomplete. They say, for example, that the permitting process is defined confusingly in the bill and could lead to delays and legal disputes.

„The ministries are incomprehensibly devising new procedures and tools for standardised processes without being able to properly explain and establish the system themselves. We see no point in creating a system that further burdens regional authorities in particular, increases the bureaucratic burden and does not clearly help achieve the goal—which, moreover, is not matched by the current state and capacity of the transmission grid,“ said Jan Hodovský, director of the office of the Association of Regions of the Czech Republic.

According to local governments, the bill does not adequately specify who is responsible for designating what, and at what level. They also describe the deadlines, competing public interests, links with existing land-use plans and the costs of changing them as lacking a coherent approach or remaining unresolved. They also point to affected investments and planned municipal development, as well as insufficient transmission grid capacity and the need to modernise it. Local governments say the bill also envisages significant changes to land-use planning documents, regardless of the development plans or investment projects of the municipalities and regions concerned.

„Municipal-level local governments were significantly disadvantaged during the preparation of the bill compared with interest groups and chambers, as they were not invited to help draft it. We therefore call for the bill to be withdrawn and its provisions to be discussed in detail with the associations and unions representing regions and municipalities,“ said Eliška Olšáková, chair of the Union of Local Self-Governments of the Czech Republic.

„We call for a partnership-based dialogue and an agreement that upholds the constitutional right to local self-government and gives investors certainty that they can build renewable energy sources without uncertainty,“ added Pavel Drahovzal, vice-chair of the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic.