Slowdown, Not Acceleration Zones: A Tool Meant to Speed Up Wind Farm Construction Is Becoming a Brake

Acceleration zones were meant to breathe new life into the construction of renewable energy projects. However, experts warn that the opposite may happen, with investors avoiding the designated areas. One reason is a raft of new requirements recently published by the Ministry of the Environment.

When the Ministry of the Environment issued its SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) opinion on the proposed acceleration zones a week ago, it stressed that the number of zones would be reduced by a third. Of the original 94, 61 areas are to remain for faster construction of renewable energy projects, with fifteen of them also set to be reduced in size.

Representatives of the renewable energy sector nevertheless point out that the number of zones removed is not what matters most. The crucial issue is the conditions the ministry has assigned, as part of its opinion, to the areas remaining in the proposal. A number of stricter measures could result in wind turbines being harder to build within the designated zones than outside them. This runs counter to the purpose of acceleration areas, which were intended to speed up the deployment of renewable energy in the Czech Republic.

A bat problem

One condition requires investors to equip wind turbines with deterrents or detection systems. Deterrents are intended to discourage birds and bats from flying into the immediate vicinity of turbines. If a detection system spots a bird, it slows down or stops the turbine. “The most effective available and proven equipment will always be used,” the document states.

Protecting animals is important. However, acceleration zones were, by definition, supposed to be mapped out outside the main habitats of birds and bats. This is also confirmed by a statement sent to the Ekonews editorial team by the Ministry of the Environment itself. “Acceleration areas are designated in locations where, based on expert evidence, there is no conflict or only a limited conflict with nature protection and other public interests,” says Veronika Krejčí, the ministry’s spokesperson.

According to expert Štěpán Chalupa, requiring the blanket deployment of deterrents and detection systems is therefore unnecessary. “These measures should be required based on an individual assessment of a specific project during the final permitting procedure, or as part of monitoring after commissioning,” says Chalupa, who chairs the Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources and is vice-chair of the Czech Wind Energy Association.

“It will be a needless waste of money and will make electricity more expensive. Deterrent technology is relatively new and is used mainly in western and northern Europe. There, the locations suitable for building wind turbines outside bird habitats have already been exhausted, so new projects are also being located where birds are present. That is precisely where deploying these systems makes sense,” Štěpán Chalupa explains.

The SEA opinion further requires wind turbine operators to ensure three years of bird mortality monitoring. “Based on the monitoring results and an assessment of the risks posed by wind turbines, measures will be established to minimise the risk of bird injury and death,” the opinion states.

“It makes no sense. What additional measure could result from monitoring when the wind turbine will already be fitted with the most effective deterrents and will have to meet further measures as a condition for the construction permit?” Chalupa asks.

The SEA opinion also describes a third measure relating to bird protection. In some acceleration zones, wind turbines will have to be shut down during the autumn bat migration period, from August to October, under certain wind speed and air temperature conditions. Investors will therefore have to measure these variables and, based on them, shut down or at least slow the turbines at certain times.

“Acceleration areas were meant to pave the way for easing the construction of renewable energy projects. Instead, they may end up blocking projects. Either they will be just patches on a map where nothing gets built, or they will become a museum of outdated technology because of height limits that do not allow the installation of the latest models from Western wind turbine manufacturers in any of the acceleration areas,” Chalupa comments. Ekonews wrote earlier about the height limits that form part of the original acceleration zone proposal.

Stricter rules than in the rest of the country

The opinion also addresses agricultural land. If an investor wants to install turbines on first- or second-category agricultural land, they will have to prove that no alternative exists, meaning there is no more suitable location for the project.

“It is a paradox. While under the amendment to the Building Act, recently approved by the Chamber of Deputies, alternatives for locating energy security projects will no longer have to be considered, this obligation will effectively remain in place for wind and solar power plants in acceleration areas,” points out lawyer Pavel Doucha, whose law firm, Doucha Šikola advokáti, has long focused on renewable energy issues. “So in this respect, acceleration areas will have a stricter legal regime than renewable energy projects outside them,” the expert adds.

“We have had very bad experience with proving alternatives. It leads to absurd communication from authorities, which, for example, say: We will not permit a solar power plant on agricultural land because you have not demonstrated that the capacity in question could not be distributed across the rooftops of the neighbouring municipality. Or you have not demonstrated that you cannot build the plant at the other end of the country,” Doucha describes.

The Ministry of the Environment is convinced that acceleration zones will be attractive to investors. “From the outset, the investor knows what area they are entering and what requirements their project will have to meet. This contributes to greater legal certainty, predictability and efficiency in the permitting process,” Krejčí argues.

“Given that project preparation takes a long time, it is already clear today where projects will be located around 2030. And they are entirely outside the designated areas. Therefore, investors are not particularly interested in acceleration zones; they will more likely complicate their work,” says Pavel Doucha.

Little room for manoeuvre

The preparation of acceleration zones takes place at the intersection of three ministries. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is the overarching authority responsible for the country’s energy policy. The Ministry of the Environment is responsible for ensuring that the designation of areas does not endanger protected sites or specially protected species. And the Ministry for Regional Development translates the process into the spatial planning system and prepares the document ultimately approved by the government. It is the clash of these three perspectives that determines what the acceleration zones will ultimately look like.

“The Ministry for Regional Development is currently incorporating the conditions of the SEA opinion and other comments into the document for the government,” says Veronika Lukášová, the ministry’s spokesperson. “It is still a draft document, so it is not yet possible to confirm which acceleration areas will ultimately be removed from the proposal or which will be reduced. The final version will only be the proposal approved by the government,” Lukášová says.

However, the Ministry for Regional Development does not have much room for manoeuvre. It must incorporate the SEA opinion into the acceleration area proposal. “The proposer is obliged to take into account the requirements and conditions arising from the opinion on the strategy. If it decides not to include the requirements and conditions in the strategy, or includes them only in part, the proposer is obliged to justify its approach,” Doucha says.

“A departure is therefore possible, but not without justification. It must be individually, substantively and verifiably justified and subsequently stated in the declaration on the approved strategy. Simply ignoring the Ministry of the Environment’s conditions would not meet the legal requirement and could constitute a flaw in the SEA process,” the lawyer explains. “Politically, I see it as the Ministry for Regional Development accepting everything in the Ministry of the Environment’s opinion.”

The third ministry

In addition to industry representatives, officials at the Ministry of Industry and Trade have reservations about the current form of the conditions and the SEA opinion. It is in this ministry’s interest to make permitting and construction of renewable energy projects easier for developers in the Czech Republic. Increasing the number of wind turbines would also lead to lower electricity prices, which have been among the highest in Europe in the Czech Republic for many years.

According to René Neděla, director general of the Energy Section at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, however, it currently makes no sense to interfere with the present form of the acceleration areas. “At the current stage, we as a ministry are not involved in the process; it is now in the hands of our colleagues at the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry for Regional Development. The key now is to fulfil the National Recovery Plan and designate the acceleration zones within the required timeframe, as requested by the European Commission,” Neděla says.

He is referring to the fact that the Czech Republic is under time pressure. It must approve the form of the acceleration areas by the end of summer, otherwise it will lose the final billion-crown payment from the National Recovery Plan. According to Neděla, there will only be scope for a broader discussion once the zones have been definitively approved by the government.

“We expect the issue to be reopened in the future and to discuss the form of acceleration areas in greater detail. It will need to be addressed. Practical implementation will show whether the spatial measures are even defined correctly. In bird protection, for example, it will be necessary to determine whether a deterrent or shutdowns at certain times will be required, or whether other mitigation measures will be needed. But it should not be done in a way that requires all three conditions to be met at once. That makes no sense,” Neděla says.

In his view, the height limits should also be subject to broader debate. “It is absurd for a spatial measure to be written for a technology that may no longer even exist,” he believes.

“We expect that once we are no longer bound by the deadlines and time limits set by the National Recovery Plan framework, there will be a more constructive technical discussion about the individual areas. Personally, I think that more suitable areas than those originally defined may yet be found,” Neděla adds.

This article was produced with a grant from the Independent Journalism Foundation.