A complete ban on siting new wind farms on islands smaller than 300 square kilometers and in areas with an altitude of more than 1,200 meters are the biggest provisions of the new special spatial planning framework for renewable energy sources that was given Wednesday in a public consultation.
It also completely prohibits photovoltaics in Natura areas and in forests or woodlands, but continues to allow them on highly productive lands.
These provisions are considered to be positive, but the question is who they will ultimately impact, given the huge volume of already mature and licensed projects, corresponding to tens of thousands of megawatts, is excluded from the application of the new framework.
The preparation of a new spatial plan, which will replace the one from 2008, was assigned in July 2020 with an initial deadline of 1.5 years. As with the tourism spatial planning, the Ministry of Environment continuously submitted new observations to the contractors, so the initial delivery of the text was in late 2023 and the final one in July 2024.
The public consultation process will last one month, but the comments submitted will not be published.
