When one door closes, another opens. The Ministry of Climate and Environment is showing determination, and after the President's recent veto, it is once again working on a bill concerning, among other things, onshore wind farms and biogas plants. Such Ministry’s approach seems to be the only solution to save any progress in regulating renewable energy in Poland. It is the Ministry of Climate and Environment (and not the recently established Ministry of Energy) that is still responsible for renewable energy sources.

As a reminder, a major amendment concerning this industry (draft bill no. 1130) passed by the Sejm in August this year was met with a negative reaction from the president. He refused to sign the bill, which in its title referred only to the law on wind power plants, but also contained changes affecting other areas of the energy sector. The president described this method of introducing changes as a trap set for him and issued a veto, mainly on the grounds of his disagreement with the changes concerning the distance between wind turbines and residential buildings. Therefore, there remains ample room for other changes, which are unlikely to cause such controversy.

The draft law is again to be comprehensive and cover numerous issues concerning, among others, energy cooperatives, wind and biogas power plants, and prosumers. The Ministry of Climate has announced that it plans to introduce numerous facilitations for the location of wind power plants. One such aid is to dispel doubts as to whether such investments can be located on the basis of an integrated investment plan and to harmonise the regulations on consultations in the planning process for wind farm investments.

The term plan zintegrowany (integrated plan, ZPI) refers to a special form of local spatial development plan in Poland, which is implemented for a specific investment at the initiative of a particular investor. In current practice, amid the chaos caused by separately created laws on spatial planning and the “distance law”, this solution does not apply to wind power plants. And that’s a pity. The benefits of using ZPI include clear rules for the investor to finance part or all of the costs of drawing up such a plan, as well as the promise of a shorter procedure and greater scope for cooperation between the investor and the municipality.

The authors of the project also return to the mechanism of rewarding local communities. Currently, local communities receive considerable income from wind farms, but this income is paid as property tax to the municipal treasury or in the form of lease payments to the owners of the land on which the farms are located. The ministry has announced another mechanism to help local communities, probably in the form of the already proposed virtual prosumer system.

In other matters, the government’s announcements are so far vague, and official information only mentions “other changes aimed at facilitating the permitting process” for onshore wind energy. So, we are waiting for the publication of the draft law.